ACQUI-HIRING John F. Coyle & Gregg D.

Polsky†
Google, Facebook, Zynga, and other prominent technology companies in Silicon Valley are buying start-up companies at a brisk pace. In many of these transactions, the buyer has little interest in acquiring the start-up’s projects or assets. Instead, the buyer’s primary motivation is to hire some or all of the start-up’s software engineers. These so-called “acqui-hires” represent a novel—and increasingly common—tool by which the largest and most successful technology companies in the world satisfy their intense demand for engineering talent. To date, the acqui-hire has attracted no attention in the academic or professional legal literature. This Article aspires to fill this gap. Drawing on interviews with Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, start-up investors, buyer representatives, and lawyers, we offer the first formal description of the acqui-hire. In so doing, we seek to enrich the understanding of those already acquainted with the acqui-hire while also providing a comprehensive account of this transaction structure to the uninitiated. The Article also identifies—and seeks to solve—a significant puzzle stemming from the acqui-hire phenomenon. If a large technology company wants to hire a team of software engineers, why go to all of the trouble and expense of acquiring the company that currently employs them? Why not simply hire away the individuals that it wants? We argue that the solution to the puzzle lies primarily in the way that social norms and the threat of informal sanctions shape the behavior of Silicon Valley software engineers. Although California law strongly supports the principle of employee mobility, social norms lead many engineers to pursue acqui-hires in lieu of defecting. We buttress this norms-based account with insights from prospect theory and tax law to show that the unique structure of the acqui-hire reduces its perceived and actual costs, which in turn promotes these transactions. The Article then considers the most significant economic issue common to all acqui-hires: how to allocate the buyer’s aggregate purchase price between the software engineers and the start-up’s outside investors. We first predict that a money-back-for-the-investors norm will eventually develop and that this norm will drive allocation determinations. We then propose several contractual innovations that could be used in an attempt to augment the investors’ allocations in acqui-hires.

 †

Assistant Professor of Law, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Willie Person Mangum Professor of Law, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. We would like to thank Gleb Arshinov, Joseph Bankman, Al Brophy, Joseph Blocher, Bernie Burk, Victor Fleischer, Charles Tait Graves, Zack Gubler, Jeffrey Hirsch, Brant Hellwig, Darian Ibrahim, Ashish Kelkar, Andrew Lund, Colman Lynch, Dana Remus, Barak Richman, Scott Roades, and participants at the Duke University Summer Workshop series for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. We would like to thank our dean Jack Boger for providing us with a research grant from the Thornton H. Brooks Fund that enabled us to travel to Silicon Valley to conduct in-person interviews in connection with this project. We would like to thank Charlie Davis, Trenton Kool, and Herbert Wang for their able research assistance. Finally, we would like to thank Hank Berry, Andy Bradley, Ivan Gaviria, Charles Tait Graves, Ashish Kelkar, Ethan Kurzweil, Colman Lynch, Johnnie Manzari, Anthony McCusker, Bryan O’Sullivan, Ron Star, Yokum Taku, and all of the other anonymous individuals who were so generous with their time in talking to us about acqui-hiring. All mistakes are, of course, our own.

[A] lot of acquisitions that we make at Facebook are, you know, we look at great entrepreneurs out there who are building things. And often, the acquisitions aren’t even to really buy their company or what they’re doing. It’s to get the really talented people who are out there trying to building something cool and say, you know, if you joined Facebook, you could work on this completely different problem. Isn’t this a more important problem? And for the people who answer that question yes, they join. And that’s how we’ve had the most success so far.1 INTRODUCTION Facebook, Google, Zynga, and other large technology companies in Silicon Valley are buying start-up companies at a brisk pace.2 In many of these transactions, the buyer has little interest in acquiring the start-up’s projects or assets. Rather, the buyer’s primary motivation is to hire some or all of the start-up’s software engineers. After the transaction, the buyer redeploys the newly hired talent onto its existing projects and jettisons the start-up’s existing projects.3 These types of acquisitions are known in the tech world as “acqui-hires.”4 Given the prominence of the companies that regularly engage in acqui-hiring, it is not surprising that this phenomenon has been a topic of frequent discussion on blogs and other websites.5 What is surprising is that, to date, the acqui-hiring phenomenon has attracted no attention in the academic or professional legal literature.6 This neglect is striking because acquihiring represents a novel—and increasingly common—tool by which the most successful technology companies satisfy their intense demand for engineering talent. It is also striking because acqui-hires raise a host of interesting issues across a wide range of topics that are relevant to lawyers
Mark Zuckerberg, Interview by Charlie Rose with Mark Zuckerberg, Founder, Facebook, and Sheryl Sandberg, COO, Facebook, in Palo Alto, Cal. (Nov. 7, 2011), available at http://venturebeat.com/2011/11/07/zuckerbergand sandbergoncharlierose/. 2 See Google Inc., Annual Report (Form 10-K), at 72 (Jan. 26, 2012) (79 total acquisitions for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2011); PrivCo Media LLC, Facebook, Inc. Private Company Financial Report 37-38 (2012) (11 total acquisitions for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2011); Zynga Inc., Annual Report (Form 10-K), at 71-72 (Feb. 28, 2012) (15 total acquisitions for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2011); see also Shayndi Raice, New Tech Spenders in Feeding Frenzy, WALL STREET JOURNAL, May 14, 2012 at B1 (describing accelerating acquisition activity by Silicon Valley buyers in 2012). 3 See Miguel Helft, For Buyers of Web Start-Ups, Quest to Corral Young Talent, N.Y. TIMES, May. 17, 2011 at A1 (“Companies like Facebook, Google, and Zynga are so hungry for the best talent that they are buying start-ups to get their founders and engineers — and then jettisoning their products.”). 4 Some commentators refer to this phenomenon as an “acqhire” or a “talent acquisition.” See Helft, supra note 3 (“Some technology blogs call it being ‘acqhired.’ The companies doing the buying say it is a talent acquisition.”). 5 See, e.g., Nate C. Hindman, The Top 15 Tech ‘Acqui-Hires,’ HUFFPOST TECH, May, 7, 2011, at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/29/acqui-hires_n_867865.html#s283726&title=Facebook__Dropio; Michael Arrington, Some Investors May Request Protection from Acqui-hires, UNCRUNCHED, Apr. 24, 2012, at http://uncrunched.com/2012/04/24/some-investors-may-request-protection-from-aqui-hires; Patricio Robles, Is the acquihire really a smart strategy? ECONSULTANCY, Oct. 28, 2011, at http://econsultancy.com/us/blog/8201-is-theacquihire-really-a-smart-strategy. 6 A recent search for the term “acqui-hiring” (and several variations in spelling) in law reviews, bar journals, and other legal periodicals on Lexis and Westlaw generated only two hits. One was a reprint of the New York Times article cited in supra note 3, which briefly described the phenomenon. The other was an article co-authored by one of us, see Gregg D. Polsky & Brant J. Hellwig, Examining the Tax Advantage of Founders' Stock, 97 IOWA L. REV. 1085, 1097-99 (2012), which briefly and preliminarily addressed the tax implications of acqui-hiring, which are explored in greater depth in Part III.E.
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and legal academics, including employment and corporate law, intellectual property, tax, social norms, and behavioral economics. This Article aspires to fill this gap in the literature. Based on in-depth interviews with individuals who have first-hand knowledge of acqui-hires—including entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, buyer representatives, and lawyers—we describe the acqui-hire transaction structure in detail.7 In so doing, we offer the first formal account of a unique transaction structure that is familiar to certain venture capital participants in Silicon Valley but largely unknown to everyone else. We also identify—and seek to solve—a puzzle regarding the acqui-hiring phenomenon. If a large technology company wants to hire a team of software engineers, why go to all of the trouble and expense of acquiring the company that currently employs them? Why not simply hire away the individuals that it wants? The latter approach would almost certainly be less costly because it would not require that any money be paid to the start-up’s outside investors. The question is all the more perplexing because California law is favorably disposed to employees who wish to change jobs. The ability to enforce covenants not to compete, for example, is strictly limited in California.8 The puzzle, therefore, is why a large technology company would ever engage in an acqui-hire to meet its hiring needs when there would seem to be a ready alternative that is less expensive and less complicated. The solution to the puzzle, we argue, lies primarily in the ability of social norms to influence the behavior of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs.9 Although California law strongly supports the principle of employee mobility, our interviews with Silicon Valley entrepreneurs suggest that they will in many cases prefer an acqui-hire over a simple defection because they do not want to risk incurring informal sanctions.10 In addition, an acqui-hire allows the entrepreneurs to claim that their venture resulted in a successful exit, which has significant cultural cachet in Silicon Valley. Acquiring is also supported by the non-adversarial culture of Silicon Valley and its legal community. We suggest, in short, that the explanation for the transaction structure at issue—the acqui-hire—lies in the unique social structure and community norms of Silicon Valley, signaling a triumph of social norms over legal rules.
We interviewed seventeen individuals in Silicon Valley during the spring of 2012. Each interviewee had first-hand knowledge of at least one acqui-hire, and many had been involved in multiple acqui-hires. Six interviews were in-person interviews conducted during a research trip to Silicon Valley in May 2012. Nine interviews were conducted over the phone. The remaining two interviews took place over e-mail, as the interviewees responded to written questions and follow-up questions in writing. We arranged our interviews by asking friends and colleagues to make introductions on our behalf and, accordingly, the responses that we received may reflect a bias stemming from this non-random sample. The answers that we received were, however, consistent with observations and sentiments voiced by bloggers and message board commenters at websites that regularly discuss acqui-hiring. 8 See infra notes 77-78 & accompanying text. 9 In this Article, we use the terms “entrepreneur” or “founder” to refer to those individuals who founded the start-up company. We use the term “engineer” to refer to software engineers or programmers who design and develop computer programs. We use the term “employee” to refer to any individual who works at the start-up at the time it is acqui-hired. In many cases, the terms overlap. For example, a founder is also an employee of the start-up and a founder is very often also an engineer. In discussing the dynamics of an acqui-hire, we sometimes use the terms “entrepreneur” and “engineer” interchangeably, first, because they often do overlap, and, second, even where they do not overlap, both groups would generally need to consent to the acqui-hire in order for the deal to be consummated. 10 The arguments and conclusions developed in this Article are restricted to acqui-hires of start-up companies in Silicon Valley by technology companies based in California. In developing these arguments, we focus our attention primarily on the incentives of the engineers rather than those of the buyer for the reasons outlined infra in note 124.
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In order to fully explain the acqui-hiring phenomenon, however, we believe it is necessary to supplement this norms-based account with two additional arguments. First, we draw upon the behavioral law and economics literature to argue that the structure of the acqui-hire reduces the perceived cost of acqui-hiring. In an acqui-hire, a portion of the entrepreneur’s compensation is, in effect, deflected to other stakeholders in the start-up. Behavioral economic theory suggests that the perceived cost of this deflection will be less than if the entrepreneur had actually received the compensation and then paid it over to these individuals. Second, we suggest that tax considerations often reduce the actual cost of engaging in an acqui-hire by transforming ordinary income into capital gains. In any particular acqui-hire, any one of the factors may be more or less important, but we contend that the aggregate effect of the factors is to make the perceived benefit of doing an acquihire larger than the perceived costs. Having solved the puzzle of why large technology companies pursue acqui-hires at all, we then consider the most significant economic issue common to all acqui-hires. This is the question of how the buyer’s aggregate purchase price is allocated between the software engineers and the start-up’s outside investors. We first argue that a money-back-for-the-investors norm is likely to develop and that this norm will drive allocation determinations in many acqui-hire transactions. We then propose and analyze several contractual innovations that could be used in an attempt to augment the investors’ allocations in acqui-hires. We proceed as follows. Part I describes the acqui-hiring phenomenon and identifies the puzzle that it presents. Part II considers—and then rejects—the argument that acqui-hiring is driven primarily by a desire on the part of the participants to reduce litigation risk. Part III outlines a comprehensive theory of acqui-hiring that emphasizes the ability of social norms to drive entrepreneurial decision-making and suggests that this account provides the most plausible solution to the acqui-hiring puzzle. Part IV takes up the critical issue of how the consideration in acqui-hires is allocated between entrepreneurs and investors. I. THE ACQUI-HIRING PHENOMENON

In this Part we describe the acqui-hiring transaction structure that has become commonplace in Silicon Valley in recent years. We first explain the typical investment structure of start-ups in Silicon Valley. We then discuss the challenges that large technology companies currently face in satisfying their intense demand for engineering talent and explain how acqui-hiring is responsive to these challenges. We conclude this Part by identifying the puzzle presented by the acqui-hiring phenomenon. A. Investment Structure in Silicon Valley Start-Ups To finance a start-up company, entrepreneurs typically sell equity in the company to outside investors. Most investment capital provided to new ventures comes from one of two sources: (1) venture capital funds (“VCs”) that raise money from other investors for the purpose of investing in early-stage companies; and (2) wealthy individuals knows as “angel” investors who invest directly in

early-stage companies.11 In addition, business incubators sometimes provide wide-ranging advice and support to early-stage companies in exchange for a small equity stake in the company.12 Investment in start-ups is typically made in a series of rounds. At the very early stages of a company’s development, there will be a seed round in which the company raises capital to launch the enterprise. The amount of cash raised in a seed round involving a technology company can range from as little as $15,000 to as much as $5 million. If the company shows promise, then it may raise additional funds from investors in subsequent rounds of financing. These subsequent rounds are known as Series A rounds, Series B rounds, Series C rounds, and so on.13 Founders and employees of a start-up generally receive common stock (or options to purchase common stock) in the company in exchange for their contribution of services to the organization.14 Venture capital investors in a start-up will, by contrast, typically receive convertible preferred stock in exchange for their cash investment.15 This preferred stock gives the holder certain management and blocking rights and the conversion feature allows the holder to convert the instrument into a specified number of common shares at the holder’s election.16 The preferred stock is also commonly granted a liquidation preference, so that if the company is liquidated or sold prior to conversion into common shares, the holder will receive the stated liquidation preference amount before the common stockholders divide up any remaining funds.17 The liquidation preference is sometimes a multiple of the amount invested; convertible preferred stock purchased for $1 million, for example, might have a liquidation preference of $2 or $3 million. On the other hand, angel investors often structure their seed investments in the form of a convertible promissory note.18 While these notes, as the name suggests, are convertible into
See generally Manuel A. Utset, Reciprocal Fairness, Strategic Behavior & Venture Survival: A Theory of Venture Capital-Financed Firms, 2002 WIS. L. REV. 44, 48-54 (discussing venture capital firms); Andrew Wong, Angel Finance: the Other Venture Capital, in VENTURE CAPITAL 71-75 (Douglas J. Cumming ed., 2010) (discussing angel investors). 12 See generally Darek Klonowski, Business Incubation and its Connection to Venture Capital, in VENTURE CAPITAL 112(Douglas J. Cumming ed., 2010) (“Business incubators are places where low-cost, real estate-based facilities are provided to nurture the development of new firms.”). The best-known business incubator in Silicon Valley is Y Combinator, which began operations in 2005 and currently provides seed funding (in cash and services) to 82 start-ups each year in exchange for small stakes in the companies. Although Y Combinator itself invests only a relatively small amount in each start-up—the average is $18,000—certain angel investors have pledged to invest $150,000 in any company that the Y Combinator accepts into its program. Parmy Olson, Who Needs Silicon Valley?, FORBES, Aug. 22, 2011. When companies funded by Y Combinator are sold, a significant number of these sales take the form of acqui-hires. See Miguel Helft, Are Talent Acquisitions a Sign of a New Bubble?, N.Y. TIMES BITS BLOG, May 18, 2011 (“Of the more than 310 start-ups that have passed through [Y Combinator], a mere 25 have been sold and about 18 of those were talent acquisitions.”). 13 See Joseph Bankman, The Structure of Silicon Valley Start-Ups, 41 UCLA L. REV. 1737, 1739-41 (1994) (discussing rounds of financing). 14 These shares or options typically vest over a specified period of time. Any unvested shares or options are forfeited if the founder or employee ceases to be employed by the company before they became fully vested. 15 William W. Bratton, Venture Capital on the Downside: Preferred Stock and Corporate Control, 100 MICH. L. REV. 891, 892 (2002) (observing that “convertible preferred stock is the dominant financial contract in the venture capital market.”); Ronald J. Gilson & David M. Schizer, Understanding Venture Capital Structure: A Tax Explanation for Convertible Preferred Stock, 116 HARV. L. REV. 874, 902 (2003) (discussing tax advantages of convertible preferred stock). 16 See Bankman, supra note 13, at 1739. 17 D. Gordon Smith, The Exit Structure of Venture Capital, 53 UCLA L. REV. 315, 347-48 (2005) (discussing liquidation preferences in VC investment agreements.). 18 Gilson & Schizer, supra note __, at 902 (“Empirical evidence suggests that [VCs] sometimes use convertible debt.”); Darian M. Ibrahim, The (Not So) Puzzling Behavior of Angel Investors, 61 VAND. L. REV. 1405, 1430 n.119 (2008) (arguing that angels use convertible debt to avoid having to price their investments). Irrespective of whether an investor acquires
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common stock, they typically offer fewer protections to the investor than convertible preferred stock.19 The notes rarely provide for a seat on the company’s board, for example.20 In the event the start-up is liquidated before the note is converted, the noteholder is typically entitled to a return of his investment plus accrued interest. It is, moreover, becoming increasingly common for the noteholder to be entitled to an acquisition premium, which entitles the holder to a multiple of his investment (e.g., double the amount of the initial investment) upon an acquisition of the company before a subsequent equity financing.21 This liquidation premium received by angels is analogous to the liquidation preference afforded the convertible preferred stock received by venture capitalist investors. B. The Insatiable Demand for Engineering Talent in Silicon Valley The history of Silicon Valley is a story of intense competition for engineering talent. In her classic historical account of the region, AnnaLee Saxenian explained how companies began competing for such talent as early as the 1970s, when “firms began to offer incentives such as generous signing bonuses, stock options, high salaries, and interesting projects to attract top people.”22 These aggressive recruiting practices continued, more or less unabated, through the 1980s and into the 1990s.23 Although the demand for engineers waned in the years following the burst of the dotcom bubble, it picked up steam again less than a decade later. Seasoned observers describe the current market for engineering talent in Silicon Valley as the most intensely competitive that they have ever seen.24 Large technology companies today are willing to offer extraordinary inducements to hire and retain good engineers.25 These inducements include generous salaries, signing bonuses, restricted
a convertible note or convertible preferred stock, founders and employees will typically own all of the outstanding common stock prior to conversion, although occasionally a business incubator or an early investor might also own a small percentage of the outstanding common stock. 19 See infra notes 20-21. Upon conversion of the note or preferred stock, the holders will receive a specified amount of common stock, and their percentage equity interest (calculated on a post-conversion basis) will be protected (before and after conversion) through anti-dilution and similar contractual protections. Depending on its precise terms, a convertible note may also be convertible into preferred stock. 20 A 2011 study on seed financing by the law firm Fenwick & West LLP, for example, found that whereas preferred stockholders were granted board seats in 70% of financings, convertible note holders were granted board seats in only 4% of financings. Fenwick & West LLP, 2011 Seed Financing Survey: Internet/Digital Media and Software Industries, at 4-5. 21 The Fenwick & West LLP study also found that 61% of convertible notes included an acquisition premium, up from 50% in 2010, and that the median premium in 2011 was 1.0x of the original amount. Id. In acquisitions where the convertible notes convert to common stock subject to a valuation cap, the return to the investors may be less than the acquisition premium. 22 ANNALEE SAXENIAN, REGIONAL ADVANTAGE: CULTURE AND COMPETITION IN SILICON VALLEY AND ROUTE 128 34-35 (1994). 23 Julie Schmit, High-tech firms roll out red carpet for top talent, USA TODAY, Nov. 27, 1995, at 1B; Kathy Rebello, Wanted: Experienced computer programmers, USA TODAY, July 19, 1989, at 7B; Miriam Rozen, Wanted: high-tech engineers, DUN’S BUSINESS MONTH, Mar. 1, 1985 (noting that Microsoft chose to locate in Washington rather than Silicon Valley in part “because employees wouldn’t be as tempted by other companies’ offers); Robert A. Mamis, Golden Handcuffs, INC., August 1983, at 59 (noting that “the battleground is so keen for talent that [it] can make a company -- or break it by its absence”). 24 Jessica Guynn, Boom is back in Silicon Valley; Another tech bubble? Maybe. But some analysts say there are differences this time, L.A. TIMES, July 17, 2011, at A1. 25 In 2000, the CEO of Cisco famously expressed the view that “a world-class engineer with five peers can out-produce 200 regular engineers.” Business Week, August 28, 2000.

stock, stock options, gourmet cafeterias, iPads, free haircuts, and tickets to sporting events.26 These inducements notwithstanding, there still are many engineers in Silicon Valley who would prefer to launch, or participate in, a start-up venture than to work for a large technology company.27 These individuals are willing to accept lower salaries and fewer perks in exchange for more control over the company’s future, the possibility of an incredible fortune if the start-up becomes the next Twitter, and the intangible benefits of participating in a start-up in Silicon Valley, where entrepreneurship is cherished.28 In recent years, this preference for participating in a technology start-up over employment at a large technology company has been reinforced by three interrelated developments.29 First, the cost of launching a start-up has fallen precipitously, as the rise of cloud computing has brought about a dramatic reduction in the cost of information technology infrastructure. 30 Second, new sources of seed funding from business incubators, angel investors, and angel “arms” of venture capital firms have become available to start-ups in Silicon Valley.31 Third, in part because of the cost savings of

Jon Swartz, Tech firms go on a hiring binge again, USA TODAY, Apr. 21, 2011, at 1B (“Tech workers . . . are coveted commodities as the high-tech industry undergoes its biggest hiring binge in more than a decade. Not since the dot-com bubble of the early 2000s has competition been so fierce.”). 27 See Joseph Bankman & Ronald J. Gilson, Why Start-ups?, 51 STAN. L. REV. 289 (1999) (discussing reasons why employees leave employers to form start-ups despite the significant tax, informational, and scope advantages of an employer over a venture capital-backed start-up); Robles, supra note __ (“For companies, it’s worth considering that many entrepreneurs aren’t going to be happy as ‘employees’. It’s simply not in their DNA, as they value the creative control and ownership that comes with entrepreneurship above just about everything else.”) (emphasis in original). 28 Homa Bahrami & Stuart Evans, Flexible Recycling and High-Technology Entrepreneurship, in UNDERSTANDING SILICON VALLEY 180-81 (Martin Kenney, ed., 2000) (“Motivated by the opportunities for personal growth, and the potential for significant financial gain . . . many technical professionals forego the relative security of a large entity for the turmoil and sense of adventure associated with a start-up.”); id. at 181 (“Maturing firms may have difficulty matching the culture intensity of a start-up, which is critical for building a team spirit and focusing emotional and creative energy on achieving the desired goal.”); JESSICA LIVINGSTON, FOUNDERS AT WORK: STORIES OF STARTUPS’ EARLY DAYS 384 (2007) (“If you’re not in school and you’re not an entrepreneur, you’re not working on new ideas. You are just a cog in someone else’s wheel and you’ll never make anything new.”) (quoting founder of an internet company). 29 Bryce Roberts, A Perfect Storm for Acqhires, BRYCE DOT VC, at http://bryce.vc/post/11994670978/acqihire-heaven (“The good news is that as the costs for starting a company have dropped and access to seed capital has increased the risk profile for starting a web based company has changed dramatically. This has created an unprecedented amount of startup activity over the last few years. The challenge for BigCos and growing startups is that many of the most talented potential hires are becoming founders instead of employees.”). 30 Joe McKendrick, How Cloud Computing is Fueling the Next Startup Boom, FORBES, November 11, 2011 (“Thanks to cloud computing . . . it now costs virtually pennies to secure and get the infrastructure needed up and running to get a new venture off the ground.”). One study found that on-premises software and servers in a new business cost upwards of $40,000; the costs of a small server operation operating in the cloud, by contrast, were virtually zero. Id. 31 See Pui-Wing Tam & Spencer E. Ante, ‘Super Angels’ Fly In to Aid Start-Ups—No Longer Flying Solo, Big Investors are Attracting Others to Juice Fledgling Companies, WALL ST. J., Aug. 16, 2010, at C1 (“As many conventional venture capitalists retreated after the technology bust last decade, super angels filled the gap, investing amounts from $25,000 to $1 million in dozens of start-up companies . . . . As these microcap venture capitalists now raise their own funds -- giving them more ammunition to participate in later financing rounds of a start-up company -- they are siphoning off more investment deals and fund-raising dollars from larger venture firms.”); Peter Delevett, Is Silicon Valley in another tech-stock bubble?, SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS, Aug. 12, 2011, at http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_18671416 (“His . . . latest MoneyTree report found that $2.3 billion spread among 275 Internet deals during the latest quarter marked a high last seen in 2001. The trend held true in Silicon Valley, where $1.51 billion went into online startups, a decade-long high.”) Many of the new angels were early employees of hugely successful technology companies, like Paypal. See Ari Levy, ‘PayPal Mafia’ Gets Richer, BUSINESS WEEK, Feb. 21, 2012; The New Tech Bubble, THE ECONOMIST, May 12, 2011 (“The bubble is being pumped partly by wealthy ‘angel’ investors, some of whom made their fortunes in the late-1990s IPO boom. Their financial firepower has increased and they are battling one another for stakes in web start-ups. In
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cloud computing and the abundance of seed funding, start-ups in Silicon Valley are now able to offer salaries that are more competitive with those offered by larger technology companies.32 This reduction in salary disparity means that the day-to-day standard of living enjoyed by start-up employees compares favorably to that of those individuals employed by large technology companies. The cumulative effect of these developments is that it is easier to finance, launch, and staff a tech start-up in Silicon Valley than ever before. These developments have led some engineers who might otherwise have joined a large technology company to launch, or participate in, a start-up. Given this reality, the problem faced by large technology companies in dire need of engineering talent is how to extricate these individuals from the start-ups that employ them.33 One possible solution is the acqui-hire. C. The Acqui-hire In a typical acquisition, the principal purpose of the acquisition is to obtain ownership of the company’s assets, whether tangible (e.g., property, plant, and equipment) or intangible (e.g., intellectual property, customer lists, and goodwill). In an acqui-hire transaction, by contrast, the acquiring company places little to no value on the assets owned by the target company.34 Instead, the transaction occurs primarily because the acquirer wishes to hire some or all of the target company’s at-will employees.35 One frequently cited rationale for acqui-hiring is that it allows a large technology company to obtain the services of several talented engineers and entrepreneurs in one fell swoop.36 It also allows
some cases angels are skimping on due diligence to win deals.”). In the wake of these developments, a number of VCs have established angel “arms” to remain active in seed round financing. Interview #6. 32 Pui-Wing Tam, Start-Up Staff Getting More Cash, WALL ST. JOURNAL, May 9, 2012 (“According to a new study . . . the salaries and cash bonuses that closely held Silicon Valley start-ups are offering their workers are now on par with what publicly traded tech companies are paying.”). 33 These companies are, significantly, able to finance these acquisitions in the current economic climate in Silicon Valley. Brad Stone, It’s Always Sunny in Silicon Valley, BLOOMBERGBUSINESSWEEK MAGAZINE, Dec. 22, 2011, at http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/its-always-sunny-in-silicon-valley-12222011.html (“It was never clearer than in 2011 that Silicon Valley exists in an alternate reality—a bubble of prosperity. Restaurants are booked, freeways are packed, and companies are flush with cash. The prosperity bubble isn’t just a state of mind: Times are as good as they’ve been in recent memory.”). 34 It is not always easy to distinguish an acquisition from an acqui-hire. Interview #1 (“It’s a blurry line between the acquisition and the acqui-hire.”). Where the start-up has some semi-valuable IP, we were told that more and more buyers are taking it and then granting back to the start-up a non-exclusive, perpetual royalty-free license to use it. Interview #6. Another interviewee, however, suggested that many buyers don’t really want the IP and are happy to let it revert to the investors. Interview #7. Still another interviewee noted that even where the buyer doesn’t want the IP, per se, it doesn’t want to leave that asset out there for someone else to use. Interview #13. 35 In Silicon Valley, employment at start-ups is typically not governed by a fixed-term employment agreement; rather, employees are typically hired on an at-will basis. Interview #10. Accordingly, an acquisition of a start-up does not, standing alone, give the acquirer any contractual right to employ any of the start-up’s employees. If a fixed-term employment agreement did exist, and if it did not terminate on a change of control (or if it were assignable by the employer in the event of a sale of its assets), then an acquisition of the employer or its assets would give rise to a contractual right of the acquirer to employ the employees; in that case, the acquirer could be viewed as acquiring an asset (namely, the favorable employment contract). 36 Interview #1 (“Against the backdrop of the most difficult hiring environment for strong engineers and product people, [acqui-hiring] can often be the only way to ensure continued top talent - especially among the risk-taking type (most entrepreneurial, what you want to come up with new technologies and ideas).”); Interview #7 (“These failed

the buyer to hire an existing, well-functioning team of individuals who will often continue to work as a team with expertise in a certain field, rather than trying to assemble a team from scratch.37 When Apple was developing its iCloud music service, for example, it acqui-hired a team of engineers from Lala that had extensive experience in streaming music online; that team stayed together at Apple to work on iCloud even after Apple terminated the Lala service.38 An acqui-hire also enables the buyer to utilize the talents of its new experienced employee team to enter into a new space quickly despite the buyer’s inexperience in that space.39 This is especially useful in Silicon Valley, where the pace of technological innovations creates a frenetic environment where time is frequently of the essence and business plans rapidly shift and pivot. Although an acqui-hire transaction can occur at any stage of a new venture’s lifecycle, it is most likely to take place after a seed round and before a Series A financing, or after a Series A and before a Series B financing.40 In many cases, the transaction will occur because the start-up was unable to develop a product and successfully bring it to market before it ran out of money. 41 This type of acqui-hire will occur after it becomes clear that another round of financing will not be forthcoming.42 In these situations, the acqui-hire is the only alternative to simply liquidating the company. Our interviews suggested that this type of acqui-hire—as an alternative to a liquidation— was the most common and, accordingly, we treat this scenario as the prototypical acqui-hire in this Article. In a minority of acqui-hires, the transaction is in lieu of the next round of financing.43 In these cases, the founders decide that an exit through an acqui-hire transaction is more attractive than continuing the start-up under the likely terms of the next round of financing.44 The terms and structure of an acqui-hire deal vary depending on a range of factors.45 In its most rudimentary form, a buyer may acqui-hire a two-person company for as little as a few hundred thousand dollars in cash. In these cases, the transaction is typically structured as a simple cash payment in consideration for the start-up’s covenant not to sue the buyer for hiring its employees;

entrepreneurs are seen as particular attractive candidates because they are risk-takers.”). 37 Interview #8 (“[O]ne virtue of an acqui-hire is that it builds upon a sense of purpose among the engineers.”). 38 Brad Stone, Apple Strikes Deal to Buy the Music Start-Up Lala, N.Y. TIMES, Dec. 5, 2009, at B2 (“One person with knowledge of the deal . . . said Apple would primarily be buying Lala’s engineers, including its energetic co-founder Bill Nguyen, and their experience with cloud-based music services.”); Bobbie Johnson, Just how much did Apple pay to buy lala.com – and why?, The GUARDIAN, Dec. 10, 2009, at p. 2 (suggesting that Apple’s acquisition of Lala was “a talent acquisition, in which Apple decided it wanted to hire a group of clever, seasoned and well respected engineers”). 39 Interview #2. 40 One interviewee offered the following explanation for why companies were more likely to be acqui-hired after a seed round than at any other time: “A company that has raised a seed round but not a full Series A or later will have (1) a smaller liquidation preference to worry about, and (2) few enough employees that it might make sense to hire the whole team. Investors will be more likely to approve the deal if they can get more of their liquidation preference back and companies are more likely to sign up a whole team if it’s not huge and of consistently high quality.” Interview #5. 41 Interview #13. 42 Id. 43 Interview #14. 44 For example, the valuation of the company that is placed on it by the next round of investors might be perceived to unduly dilute the interests of the founders, or the liquidation preference required by investors might be perceived as too high. In either case, the precise terms of the next round of financing might reduce the founders’ interests in the company to the point that the acqui-hire bird-in-the-hand is more attractive than the possibility of the future two-in-the-bush. 45 These factors include, but are not limited to, the following: (1) identity of the founders, (2) technology, (3) product, (4) channels, (5) relationships, (6) identity of the investors, (7) terms of the initial investment. Interview #13.

the start-up thereafter liquidates and distributes the cash and any other assets to its shareholders.46 In larger deals, the acqui-hire is commonly structured as an asset sale.47 Often, the only assets acquired by the purchaser will be whatever intellectual property rights that the start-up owns; other assets, such as leases, are left behind.48 The consideration paid by the buyer and whatever assets left behind are in many cases distributed when the start-up thereafter liquidates. In still larger deals, acqui-hires may be structured as a stock purchase or as a merger.49 In these cases, stock of the buyer may be included as part of the consideration, and the transaction sometimes will be structured as a tax-free reorganization.50 Notwithstanding these generalizations, each acqui-hire transaction is unique, with deal terms varying to take account of the specific facts and circumstances surrounding the transaction. Key facts include the number of employees that the buyer wishes to hire, the value of those employees to the buyer, the value (if any) of the start-up’s intellectual property and other assets, and the customary practices of the corporate development team that initiates these deals on behalf of the buyer. There is, nevertheless, one feature that is common to every acqui-hire transaction. This is the existence of two distinct pools of consideration paid by the buyer.51 The first pool of consideration—which we call the “deal consideration”—is used to acquire the company. The deal consideration usually consists of cash or buyer stock and is used, depending on the specific deal structure, to pay for the covenant not to sue, buy all or some of the start-up’s assets, acquire the start-up company’s stock, or serve as the merger consideration.52 When the transaction closes, the cash and stock that constitute the deal consideration will eventually end up in the hands of the startup’s outside investors and its employee shareholders.53 The second pool of consideration—which we call the “compensation pool”—is used to compensate the start-up’s founders and employees for their future services in favor of the buyer. Most of the compensation pool consists of options, restricted stock, or restricted stock units in the buyer that vest over specified periods of employment.54 Sometimes the consideration may be performance-vested, meaning that it vests upon the attainment of identified benchmarks.55 Most commonly, the consideration in the compensation pool will completely vest after three or four years of employment.56 Significantly, neither outside investors nor employee shareholders who are not
Interview #11. This promise not to sue is known as a waiver and release or, alternatively, as a covenant not to sue. In these deals, no assets are acquired and virtually no diligence is performed by the buyer. Id. Nevertheless, lawyers in Silicon Valley tend to view these deals as a form of acqui-hire because consideration flows to the company and the company thereafter liquidates; this is very similar to the mechanics that take place in traditional M&A deal involving a sale of the target’s assets. 47 Interview #8. 48 Id. 49 Interview #11; Interview #13. 50 Interview #11. Some asset deals are also structured as tax-free reorganizations. 51 Interview #6; Interview # 14. 52 Interview #11. 53 Interview #14. In practice, this means that the distribution will occur in accordance with the company’s liquidating distribution waterfall. In cases where the investment was made in the form of a convertible note, these notes will sometimes be paid a predetermined multiple of their face value. In other cases, the holder of the note will convert it to common stock and be paid as a common stockholder. 54 Interview #7. 55 Id. 56 One interviewee reported that the buyer will enter into offer letters and compensation deals with the engineers and that they will be offered equity in the buyer that ranges from slightly better than market to much better than market.
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hired by the acquirer will receive anything from the compensation pool; all of it goes to those employees hired by the buyer.57 In practice, this means that the cash and restricted stock in the compensation pool will wind up in the hands of the start-up’s software engineers, as the buyer in an acqui-hire transaction is rarely interested in hiring the other employees. (While there is a shortage of engineering talent in Silicon Valley, there is no shortage of marketers.) The diagram below displays the two distinct pools of consideration paid in an acqui-hire:

Given the existence of the two separate pools, a key issue is how the aggregate consideration paid by the buyer is allocated between the two pools.58 Outside investors in the start-up, as well as employee shareholders who are not hired by the buyer, would prefer to allocate more to the deal consideration, so as to maximize their share of the proceeds.59 On the other hand, engineers who are to be hired by the buyer would prefer to allocate more to the compensation pool, because they do not have to share that pool with investors or other employees.60 The buyer likewise would generally prefer to allocate more to the compensation pool.61 In an acqui-hire, the buyer is mostly, if
Interview #11. The stock will usually vest ratably on a monthly basis over three or four years, but often with a one year cliff (meaning that the first year’s shares will not vest at all until one full year has passed). Id. 57 Interview #7. 58 Interview #1; Interview #6; Interview #8; Interview #14. 59 Interview #9. 60 Interview #6. 61 Id.

not exclusively, interested in hiring and retaining the engineers. While the entirety of the compensation pool will go to these desired employees, a substantial portion of the deal consideration will go to other parties. Paying deal consideration therefore is a transaction cost to the hiring transaction from the perspective of the buyer. Furthermore, only the compensation pool provides positive incentive effects.62 In allocating the buyer’s aggregate purchase price between the two pools, the interests of the buyer and the engineers are thus closely aligned against the interests of the investors and other shareholders of the start-up. In fact, a number of interviewees claimed that there often was some degree of collusion between the buyer and the engineers to structure the acqui-hire deal to maximize the compensation pool at the expense of the deal consideration.63 Lawyers representing investors, in particular, felt that acqui-hiring deals with terms that allocated very large proportions of the total consideration to the compensation pool were unfair.64 If the investors had not put up the seed and other funding in the first place, they argued, the desired team of engineers would never have been assembled, they would never have had the chance to showcase their talents, and they would consequently never have been offered such a rich compensation package by the buyer.65 Other participants in acqui-hire transactions contended, however, that because the only valuable “asset” of the acqui-hired companies was their at-will human capital, to which the start-up had no legally cognizable claim, the engineers should receive the vast majority, if not all, of the consideration paid by the buyer.66 Furthermore, the alternative to an acqui-hire in most cases is for the company to liquidate, in which case the investors would receive, at best, pennies on the dollar.67 Thus, some argued, investors should be satisfied with any allocation to the deal consideration that results in a larger recovery than liquidation.68 Turning now to pricing, the overall size of an acqui-hire is, in many cases, driven by the number of engineers at the start-up who will be employed by the buyer. It has been reported that a general rule of thumb in Silicon Valley acqui-hires is $1 million per engineer.69 Despite this general rule of thumb, participants reported that the total prices for acqui-hires they had seen ranged from

Interview #6; Interview #14. The compensation pool is composed largely of restricted stock and other time- or performance-vested consideration, which encourages the engineers to remain employed by the buyer or to achieve certain performance benchmarks. The deal consideration, which consists usually of cash or unrestricted stock, typically provides no such incentive effect. Furthermore, portions of the deal consideration end up in the hands of people who will not work for the buyer; therefore, there will be no incentive benefits resulting from that consideration regardless of its form. 63 Interview #6; Interview #9. 64 Interview #9. 65 Id. 66 Interview #6; Interview #11. 67 Interview #7. When a company is wound down, any remaining value in the business would usally be remitted to the outside investors, whether by virtue of the liquidation preference guaranteed by the terms of their preferred stock or by virtue of their status as creditors by the terms of their convertible notes. 68 Interview #6; Interview #7. In some cases, the entrepreneurs will shop themselves to the buyer. In others, the investors will shop the entrepreneurs. In still others, the buyer’s business development team will recommend that the corporate development team take a look. 69 See Helft, supra note __. This price reflects the combined amounts in the deal consideration pool and the compensation pool. Interview #8. It is, however, often difficult to assess value on a per hire basis because the larger deals have some meaningful IP or product associated with the target company.
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$200,000 to $50 million or more. One interviewee estimated that the total consideration paid in the median acqui-hire transaction was in the $3 to $6 million range.70 D. The Puzzle The popularity of the acqui-hire presents an interesting puzzle. If all the buyer wants is some or all of the start-up’s at-will employees, why not just hire away those employees? Why go to all of the trouble and expense of acquiring the company? Simply hiring these individuals away from the start-up would be cheaper because no money would need to be paid to the start-up’s investors or to those employees that the buyer does not wish to hire.71 Throughout this Article, we refer to the decision to hire the desired employees away from the start-up through the normal channels as a “straight hire” or “defection” to distinguish it from an “acqui-hire.” The straight hire is, of course, the way that most hiring occurs in the United States.72 It is extremely unusual—indeed, it is almost unheard of outside of Silicon Valley—for one company to buy another company solely for the purpose of obtaining the future services of its at-will employees. The mystery, therefore, is why Google, Facebook, and others have engaged in so many acqui-hiring transactions in recent years when there exists a viable alternative means of achieving their hiring goals that is less expensive and less complicated. One might think that acqui-hires are sometimes preferred over straight hires in Silicon Valley because they facilitate the hiring of teams as opposed to individuals. A moment’s reflection, however, reveals the problem with this argument. There is no obvious reason why the hiring company could not recruit and hire a team of at-will employees away from another company through the normal hiring channels. Groups of law firm partners and associates, for example, routinely leave one firm to join another.73 Furthermore, in any acqui-hire, the desired employees and the buyer will have to negotiate their compensation packages on an individual-by-individual basis, meaning that there are few if any negotiation efficiencies that result from acqui-hiring. Thus, the notion that acqui-hires are necessary or even helpful in the recruitment of teams of employees away from their current employer is unconvincing.
Interview #8. While the level of acqui-hiring appears to have increased in recent years, it still represents only a portion of the hiring that occurs in Silicon Valley. One entrepreneur whose team was ultimately acqui-hired by a large technology company told us that he had been recruited by a number of other technology companies on an individual basis. Interview #12. Acqui-hiring is therefore only one of the many ways by which large technology companies in Silicon Valley satisfy their seemingly insatiable need for engineering talent. 71 This course of action could be cheaper because the engineers who accept positions with the buyer would continue to receive the same amounts, with the buyer keeping the rest. Alternatively, the total consideration paid by the buyer could remain constant, but all of the deal consideration pool would be shifted into the compensation pool. In that case, the engineers are obviously better off. This buyer’s position is likewise improved because the compensation pool can be used to provide the engineers with even more attractive incentives to stay with the buyer or to meet specified performance goals. Finally, the buyer and the desired employees could achieve some middle ground, where the buyer pays less and receives more positive incentive effects and the desired employees receive more. In any of these situations, a straight hire would cut investors and the non-desired employees out of the deal, leaving more for the buyer and the desired employees to share as they wish. 72 J.B. Barney, The Relationship Between Venture Capitalists and Managers in New Firms: Determinants of Contractual Covenants, 20 MANAG. FINANCE 19 (1994) (discussing concept of “competitive opportunism” and identifying the departure of an employee for a rival firm as an example of such opportunism). 73 See, e.g., Team of Intellectual Property Litigators Joins Kasowitz in Atlanta and New York (May 2011) (reporting that six partners from Sutherland, Asbill & Brennan LLP had departed to join Kasowitz, Benson, Torres & Friedman LLP).
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Part II considers and rejects one rationale—that acqui-hiring is a defensive response to the threat of litigation—that may at first glance appear to explain the acqui-hiring phenomenon. Part III then explains our theory of acqui-hiring.

II.

ACQUI-HIRING AS A MECHANISM TO REDUCE LITIGATION RISK?

One intuitive and straightforward reason why the buyer might choose to engage in an acquihire rather than a straight hire is to eliminate or reduce litigation risk. If a buyer were to simply hire away all or a subset of a start-up’s engineering team, the outside investors may be tempted to cause the start-up to sue both the buyer and the departing engineers. To forestall this possibility, the buyer may structure the transaction as an acqui-hire.74 On this account, the payments made to investors in connection with the acqui-hire through the deal consideration are, in effect, payments to obtain the release of legal claims stemming from the buyer’s poaching of the company’s engineering talent.75 Whether this account actually explains the puzzle depends on whether the investors have valid legal claims against the buyer or departed employees and, if so, whether the investors could credibly threaten to pursue these claims in court.76 If either one of these two conditions—the existence of valid legal claims and a credible threat to sue—is not present, then litigation-risk reduction cannot explain acqui-hiring. A. Validity of Legal Claims

There are a number of legal claims that, while actionable in other jurisdictions, would not be viable in California if a straight hire were pursued in lieu of an acqui-hire. The most obvious of these claims would be for a breach of a covenant not to compete executed by the departing employee. In most jurisdictions, these covenants are enforceable to the extent they are reasonable in scope and duration.77 California employment law, however, is famous for its refusal to enforce covenants not to compete regardless of their scope and duration, except in certain limited contexts

In contrast to the straight hire, the acqui-hire typically requires the approval of the outside investors in the start-up company. When the acqui-hire is structured as a sale of all or substantially all of the company’s assets, a sale of the company’s stock, or a merger, the investors will either have to affirmatively take part in the transaction (e.g., agree to sell their stock) or will possess contractual rights to prevent the transaction from occurring. In cases where the acqui-hire is consummated through the start-up’s execution of a covenant not to sue, the buyer and the desired employees could insist that the investors (and any other shareholders, such as employees that are not desired by the buyer) also consent to the transaction. In each case, the investors must consent to the transaction or it will not take place. 75 There are many examples where one company paid a sum of money to another company in connection with the hiring away of an employee. See, e.g., R. McMillan, Nortel appoints ex-Motorola exec as operations chief, COMPUTERWORLD, Jan. 20, 2006 (Nortel paid Motorola $11m to release its COO from his non-compete). 76 Technically, any claims would be owned by the start-up, but following the departure of the employees via a straight hire the start-up would presumably be controlled by the investors. Thus, the decision about whether or not to sue would be made by the investors, and the benefits of a successful suit would inure mostly to them. For simplicity purposes, therefore, we refer to the investors as owning the claim. 77 See generally BRIAN M. MALSBERGER, COVENANTS NOT TO COMPETE, A STATE-BY-STATE SURVEY (6th ed., 2008).
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not pertinent here.78 In fact, scholars have argued that this unique California law and its liberating effect on employee mobility are partly responsible for the strength of the technology sector in Silicon Valley.79 Thus, under California law, even if the departing employees had executed a covenant not to compete with the start-up, which would be highly unusual, it is clear that it would not be enforceable.80 Trade secret law, at least in theory, offers an alternative means of achieving the same effect as a covenant not to compete. A number of jurisdictions have adopted the doctrine of “inevitable disclosure” in the area of trade secret litigation.81 This doctrine permits an employer to obtain an injunction to prevent even an at-will employee from going to work for a competitor if the court concludes that the employee will “inevitably disclose” trade secrets that were obtained in the course of working for the former employer.82 California courts have, however, explicitly declined to follow the doctrine of inevitable disclosure, which means that this particular legal avenue is likewise unavailable to a start-up when employees defect.83 Finally, if the employee had entered into a fixed-term employment contract with the start-up, her departure could potentially create valid claims against the employee and the hiring company. The employee would be in breach of the employment agreement, while the hiring company could (depending on the nature of its recruitment activities) be liable for tortious interference with a contractual relationship.84 But start-up employees in Silicon Valley do not sign fixed-term employment agreements.85 Rather, they are at-will employees. Their departures therefore do not
California Business and Professions Code 16600 (“Except as provided in this chapter, every contract by which anyone is restrained from engaging in a lawful profession, trade, or business in any kind is to that extent void.”). To be sure, one of the few exceptions to this general rule provides that non-competes are enforceable in connection with the sale of a business. Id. at 16601. To be sure, one of the few exceptions to this general rule provides that non-competes are enforceable when they are executed in connection with the sale of a business. This exception, however, is not relevant to a straight hire scenario because, if a departing engineer had executed a non-compete, it would not have been executed in connection with the sale of any business. Rather, the non-compete would have been executed in connection with the investor’s investment in an on-going business or, alternatively, in connection with the hiring of the engineer. Nevertheless, the exception is potentially relevant to the buyer in an acqui-hire. In an acqui-hire, the buyer could impose an enforceable non-compete, while in a straight hire situation, any non-compete would be unenforceable. See infra note 157 (discussing strategic use of acquisitions to enforce covenants not to compete). 79 See ALAN HYDE, WORKING IN SILICON VALLEY: ECONOMIC AND LEGAL ANALYSIS OF A HIGH-VELOCITY LABOR MARKET 27-40 (2003) (discussing role played by legal framework in promoting employee turnover in Silicon Valley); Ronald Gilson, The Legal Infrastructure of High Technology Industrial Districts: Silicon Valley, Route 128, and Covenants Not to Compete, 74 N.Y.U. L. REV. 575 (1999) (same). 80 Under California law, the mere inclusion of such a clause in an employment agreement may give rise to a claim of unfair competition against the employer. See Application Group, Inc. v. Hunter Group, Inc., 61 Cal. App. 4th 881, 906 (1998). 81 See PepsiCo, Inc. v. Redmond, 54 F.3d 1262 (7th Cir. 1995); Campbell Soup Co. v. Giles, 47 F.3d 467, 469-70 (1st Cir. 1995). 82 See Gilson, supra note __, at 622-26. 83 See Whyte v. Schlage Lock Co., 101 Cal. App. 4th 1443, 1462 (Cal. App. 4th Dist. 2002). 84 CSRT Van Expedited, Inc. v. Werner Enterprises, Inc., 479 F.3d 1099, 1110 (9th Cir. 2007) (discussing elements of a claim for intentional interference with contractual relations under California law). 85 Interview #10. Although employees at Silicon Valley start-ups do not sign fixed-term employment agreements, virtually all start-ups require their employees to enter into non-disclosure agreements, invention assignment agreements, and non-solicitation agreements as a condition of their employment. Id. It is conceivable that a departing employee could be sued for breach of a non-solicitation agreement if that individual provides names of his former co-workers to his new employer and the new employer subsequently hired those individuals. See Loral Corp. v. Moyes, 174 Cal. App. 3d 269 (1985) (concluding that non-solicitation agreements, in contrast to covenants not to compete, are valid in California). Suits alleging breaches of a non-solicitation agreements are, however, vanishingly rare. Interview #10.
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breach any employment agreement. Furthermore, under California law, the act of inducing an atwill employee to leave his current employer to accept a position with a competitor is not, by itself, actionable.86 While claims based on covenants not to compete, inevitable disclosure of trade secrets, and breach of an employment agreement would not be available, there are other legal claims that an aggrieved investor might, depending on the specific facts and circumstances surrounding the straight hire, successfully bring against the hiring company and the defecting engineers.87 Investors could, for example, allege a breach of the departing employee’s fiduciary duty of loyalty to the start-up if that employee actively recruited other individuals to join him in going to work for a competitor prior to his departure.88 Alternatively, depending on the precise facts—in particular, whether the project that the defecting engineer works on while employed by the hiring company is sufficiently similar to the start-up’s projects—investors could allege that the hiring company and the defecting engineer colluded to misappropriate the start-up’s trade secrets.89 While investors could conceivably bring other claims against the hiring company—such as a cause of action for unfair competition90 or for intentional interference with prospective economic advantage91— these claims are likely to succeed
Reeves v. Hanlon, 33 Cal. 4th 1140, 1145 (2004) (“[O]ne commits no actionable wrong by merely soliciting or hiring the at-will employee of another.”); see also Diodes, Inc. v. Franzen, 260 Cal. App. 2d 244, 255 (1968); RESTATEMENT OF TORTS (SECOND) § 768, cmt. i (“The competitor is . . . free, for his own competitive advantage, to . . . offer better contract terms, as by offering an employee of the plaintiff more money to work for him . . . all without liability.”). 87 See Jeffrey W. Kramer, 27 LOS ANGELES LAWYER 19, 21 (2005) (“Employers may still be liable for interference with economic relations when recruiting at-will employees if the recruiting involves breaches of fiduciary duty, misappropriation of trade secrets, defamation, or any conduct constituting unfair competition.”). 88 The viability of this claim would, of course, depend on whether the departing employee was a corporate officer or director who owed fiduciary duties to the start-up. See Bancroft-Whitney Co. v. Glen, 64 Cal. 2d. 327, 345 (1966) (describing fiduciary duties owed by corporate officers and concluding these duties were breached when company president provided information to a competitor to facilitate his own recruitment as well as that of sixteen other employees); GAB Business Services, Inc. v. Lindsay & Newsom Claim Services, 83 Cal. App. 4 th 409 (2000) (concluding that there was a breach of a fiduciary duty as a matter of law where a vice-president used insider knowledge to recruit seventeen employees into jobs with a competitor); RESTATEMENT (SECOND) ON AGENCY § 393 cmt. e (“[A] court may find that it is a breach of duty for a number of the key officers or employees to agree to leave their employment simultaneously and without giving the employer an opportunity to hire and train replacements.”). 89 See Cal. Civ. Code §§ 3426-3426.10 (adopting Uniform Trade Secrets Act); Therapeutic Research Faculty v. NBTY, Inc., 488 F. Supp. 2d 991, 999 (E.D. Cal. 2007) (identifying elements of a misappropriation of trade secrets claim in California); Charles Tait Graves, Non-Public Information and California Tort Law: A Proposal for Harmonizing California's Employee Mobility and Intellectual Property Regimes under the Uniform Trade Secrets Act, 2006 UCLA JOURNAL OF LAW & TECHNOLOGY 1 (arguing that the California version of the Uniform Trade Secrets Act preempts alternative common law claims). California trade secrets law is generally regarded as very pro-defendant. See Whyte v. Schlage Lock Co., 101 Cal. App. 4th 1443, 1462 (Cal. App. 4th Dist. 2002) (concluding that California does not follow the doctrine of inevitable disclosure); Cal. Civ. Code 3426.4 (“If a claim for misappropriation is made in bad faith . . . the court may award reasonable attorney’s fees and costs to the prevailing party.”). 90 California Bus. & Professions Code, § 17200 (defining unfair competition to constitute “any unlawful, unfair or fraudulent business act”); Korea Supply Co. v. Lockheed Martin Corp., 29 Cal. 4th 1134, 1143 (2003) (observing that the California Unfair Competition Law is a statute that “‘borrows’ violations from other laws by making them independently actionable as unfair competitive practices”); Bancroft-Whitney, at 332 n.4 (concluding that hiring company was liable for unfair competition because it had benefitted from the breach of a fiduciary duty of a corporate officer at the target company in recruiting other employees). 91 See Reeves v. Hanlon, 33 Cal. 4th 1140, 1144 (2004) (“[A] [hiring company] may be held liable under an intentional interference theory for having induced an at-will employee to quit working for the [original company.]”); id. at 1144 (clarifying that recovery under this theory is only possible where the plaintiff “plead[s] and prove[s] that the defendant engaged in an independently wrongful act, i.e. an act proscribed by some constitutional, statutory, regulatory, common law, or other determinable legal standard”); CSRT Van Expedited, Inc. v. Werner Enterprises, Inc., 479 F.3d 1099, 1110 (9th Cir. 2007) (concluding that acts violating California’s Unfair Competition Law qualify as “wrongful” for purposes of
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only where the investors are also able to show an underlying breach of a fiduciary duty or the misappropriation of a trade secret.92 B. Credibility of an Investor’s Threat to Sue

The foregoing discussion suggests that, depending on the facts and circumstances, investors may in some cases have viable claims stemming from a defection by an employee or a group of employees from a start-up to a large technology company in California. However, the existence of legal claims does not by itself compel the conclusion that the purpose of acqui-hiring is to mitigate legal risk. First, valid legal claims likely would exist only in a subset of acqui-hiring transactions. Second, and more importantly, investors in Silicon Valley are extremely reluctant to pursue legal claims against their former entrepreneurs. As a result, it would be extremely difficult for investors to credibly threaten a lawsuit, even in cases where the lawsuit might be meritorious. “No investor in Silicon Valley,” we were told repeatedly, “would ever sue its entrepreneurs. It just doesn’t happen.”93 A comprehensive search of reported state and federal cases in California appears to confirm this conventional wisdom. Excepting cases involving allegations of fraud or outright theft, our search of Westlaw and Lexis databases did not turn up a single reported case in which an investor in a Silicon Valley technology start-up had sued its entrepreneurs.94 This result is consistent with the only other published empirical study of litigation in the venture capital industry.95 While there are many possible reasons for this dearth of lawsuits (including California law’s pro-employee-mobility orientation), the one that our interviewees repeatedly cited was the critical importance of investor reputation in Silicon Valley.96 As one investor explained, “I’m not aware of any cases of VC-initiated
establishing liability under a claim for intentional interference); American Mortgage Network v. Loancity.com, 2006 Cal. App. Unpub. LEXIS 10141, at 59 (describing “breach or conspiracy to breach a fiduciary duty” as “independently wrongful” conduct for purposes of this claim); Gemini Aluminum Corp. v. Cal. Custom Shapes, 95 Cal. App. 4th 1249, 1257 (2002) (discussing what conduct qualifies as “wrongful”); see also BRIAN M. MALSBERGER, TORTIOUS INTERFERENCE IN THE EMPLOYMENT CONTEXT: A STATE BY STATE SURVEY 298 (2010). 92 Whether the investors are likely to prevail on either of these claims will, moreover, depend heavily on the facts and circumstances surrounding the defection. One treatise states that liability will generally be imposed on any of these theories only where the hiring company has “acted maliciously, or wholly without justification, or with the primary objective of driving the plaintiff out of business.” 24 A.L.R. 3d 821; see also Silicon Knights, Inc. v. Crystal Dynamics, Inc., 983 F.Supp. 1303 (N.D. Cal. 1997) (discussing claims that a California-based video game designer raided the employees of a Canadian company). Another treatise notes that these claims will typically turn on “how disloyal and generally evil the [defendants] have been, how badly the [original company] has been damaged as a result, and the adequacy of the proof of those charges.” JAMES POOLEY, TRADE SECRETS: HOW TO PROTECT YOUR IDEAS AND ASSETS 83 (1982). In cases where the start-up was foundering and on the verge of liquidation before the defection, it may be difficult to prove that the plaintiff company had suffered any actual damages. 93 Interview #8 (“Most entrepreneurs are not worried about litigation. The odds are slim that the investors will sue.”); Interview #11 (“I’ve never heard of an investor who sued a founder.”); see also Interview #1; Interview #10. 94 See WPP Luxembourg Gamma Three Sarl v. Spot Runner, Inc., 655 F.3d 1039, 1045 (9th Cir. 2011) cert. denied, 111069, 2012 WL 645058 (U.S. June 4, 2012) (investor sued founders for fraud); Admiral Capital Venture, I, Ltd. v. Pelczarski, 892 F.2d 82 (9th Cir. 1989) (same); see also Jan Cooper Alexander, Do the Merits Matter? A Study in Settlements in Securities Class Actions, 43 STAN. L. REV. 497, 571 (1991) (“The sophisticated investors in private placements (usually venture capitalists or established companies) do not generally sue if things turn out badly, in the absence of strong evidence of common law fraud.”). 95 See Vladimir Atanasov, Vladimir Ivanov & Kate Litvak, The Effect of Litigation on Venture Capital Reputation, Feb. 22, 2008, at 18 (“When founders are involved in litigation, they are almost always plaintiffs.”). 96 This explanation is consistent with scholarly accounts that have examined this issue in other contexts. See HYDE, supra note __, at 40 (“[C]ompanies [in Silicon Valley] that sue departing employees will suffer harm to their reputation.”).

litigation. We just wouldn’t do it - and we’d lose if we tried. And the reputational damage of suing your entrepreneurs would be almost irreparable.”97 To appreciate the key role played by investor reputation in Silicon Valley, it is necessary to understand that entrepreneurs place an extremely high value on investor reputation in deciding with whom to partner. One study found that “a financing offer from a high-reputation VC is approximately three times more likely to be accepted by an entrepreneur” and that “highly reputable VCs acquire start-up equity at a 10-14% discount.”98 This premium on reputation is reasonable because, as others have explained in great detail, the formal contracts between investors and entrepreneurs are incomplete, leaving investors with the ability to act opportunistically.99 An investor’s good reputation ameliorates an entrepreneur’s concern about opportunistic behavior.100 Investors, in turn, trade on their good reputation, citing it as a major reason to choose them over other investors. In the current intensely competitive environment for venture investment opportunities, a damaged reputation could dry up investment opportunities or otherwise make those opportunities significantly more expensive.101 To evaluate the reputation of various venture capital firms, angel investors, and business incubators, entrepreneurs consult a variety of informal sources, including their friends and lawyers, as well as websites such as TechCrunch or Hacker News.102 While these networks are not perfect, they function well in transmitting highly salient information to entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley.103 A lawsuit filed against a founder would be extremely salient. Interviewees were emphatic that, if an investor were to sue its entrepreneurs, the story would be posted to TechCrunch within hours and

Interview #1. This insight is generally consistent with the views of legal scholars. See Darian M. Ibrahim, The (Not So) Puzzling Behavior of Angel Investors, 61 VAND. L. REV. 1405, 1435 (2008) (“The conventional wisdom is that the tight-knit nature of communities such as Silicon Valley creates a reputation market among venture capitalists and entrepreneurs, which explains the lack of litigation between them.”); Smith, supra note __, at 153-54 (“Conventional wisdom has it that lawsuits in the venture capital community are rare. According to this view, entrepreneurs are loath to sue their venture capitalists for fear of gaining a reputation for recalcitrance and never receiving venture funding. On the other hand, venture capitalists are reluctant to sue entrepreneurs because they fear acquiring a reputation for abusiveness that will drive away future entrepreneurs.”). 98 David H. Hsu, What Do Entrepreneurs Pay for Venture Capital Affiliation?, 59 J. FIN. 1805, 1807 (2004). 99 See Utset, supra note __, at __; but see Kate Litvak & Michael Klausner, What Economists Have Taught Us About Venture Capital Contracting, in BRIDGING THE ENTREPRENEURIAL FINANCIAL GAP: LINKING GOVERNANCE WITH REGULATORY POLICY (Michael Wincorp, ed., 2001) (questioning effectiveness of reputational constraints on VC opportunism). 100 See Brian Broughman, Investor Opportunism, and Governance in Venture Capital, in VENTURE CAPITAL (Donald J. Cumming, ed., 2010) (surveying literature on reputational constraints on VC opportunism). 101 See Hsu, supra note __; Ronald J. Gilson, Engineering a Venture Capital Market: Lessons from the American Experience, 55 STAN. L. REV. 1067, 1076-92 (2003) (“Because the [VC firm] needs to raise successor funds, it will have to make investments in new portfolio companies run by other entrepreneurs. If a [VC firm] behaves opportunistically toward entrepreneurs in connection with previous portfolio company investments, it will lose access to the best new investments. This, in turn, will make raising successor funds more difficult.”). 102 Mark C. Suchman, Dealmakers and Counselors: Law Firms as Intermediaries in the Development of Silicon Valley, in UNDERSTANDING SILICON VALLEY: THE ANATOMY OF AN ENTREPRENEURIAL REGION 71, 89 (Martin Kenney, ed., 2000) (discussing advising role played by lawyers); D. Gordon Smith, Venture Capital Contracting in the Information Age, 2 J. SMALL & EMERGING BUS. L. 133, 153-54 (1998) (discussing the potential for the internet to be used as a means of disseminating information relating to venture capital reputation). Our interviewees noted that generally reliable information about investors could be found at sites such as TechCrunch and Hacker News. 103 Cf. HYDE, supra note __, at 39 (noting that “chat groups lit up all over the Valley” after Intel sued two former employees for theft of trade secrets).
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would quickly become the talk of the Valley. Regardless of the merits of the suit, that investor would thereafter find it much more difficult to invest in start-ups at competitive prices.104 The fact that investors in Silicon Valley will not bring suits against entrepreneurs does not mean that they lack the ability to sanction bad behavior by entrepreneurs. As one interviewee explained, “VCs don’t sue their founders. They keep a list. And they tell their friends.”105 The implications of these informal sanctioning regimes are explored in the next Part. For now, it is sufficient to conclude that mitigation of litigation risk does not appear to explain the acqui-hiring phenomenon. This conclusion was confirmed over the course of our numerous conversations with entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and attorneys in Silicon Valley. In every interview, we specifically asked whether litigation risk was a significant factor in the popularity of acqui-hiring. The answer that we consistently received was that it was not.106 III. A THEORY OF ACQUI-HIRING

If acqui-hiring is not a defensive response to the threat of litigation, then we are back to the original puzzle. If all the buyer wants is the engineers, why not just hire them away? Or, to put it another way, why does a buyer who wants to hire a team of software engineers agree, in effect, to make side payments to investors and other employees of the start-up? In this Part, we seek to answer this question by providing a comprehensive theory of acquihiring. Drawing on interviews with acqui-hiring participants as well as academic literature across a range of areas, we argue that there is no single factor that drives the buyer and the entrepreneurs to adopt this transaction structure. Rather, the decision to do an acqui-hire instead of a straight hire appears to be the product of a number of factors, many of which are interrelated. We argue, first, that a number of non-legal mechanisms—reputational concern, self-image, and a desire to avoid social sanctions—serve to constrain the desire of entrepreneurs to maximize the short-term financial gains they could realize via a straight hire.107 We also contend that acquiSee supra note __. While investors could, in theory, file a suit against the hiring company without naming the departing employees as defendants, this course of action will often not be attractive. To see this, consider the investor’s potential claims of unfair competition and intentional interference with prospective economic advantage. The clearest way to prevail on such claims would be to prove that a departing employee who was also a corporate officer breached a fiduciary duty to the original company and that the hiring company benefitted from the breach. In fact, all of the investor’s potentially viable legal claims against the hiring company will necessarily involve allegations of wrongful conduct by the former employees. Thus, even if the former employee is not actually a defendant, she would still be deposed aggressively by the investor’s lawyer. In these circumstances, it is highly unlikely that the entrepreneurial community will appreciate the fact that the investor, while assailing the former entrepreneur’s conduct and character, has not technically sued the entrepreneur. Certainly, investors would not rely on word of mouth and other informal reputational scorecards to maintain such a fine distinction. 105 Interview #9. 106 This statement is subject to two minor qualifications. In one conversation with a Silicon Valley lawyer, we were told that the acqui-hire was driven in part by a “pathological aversion to legal risk.” Interview #6. In another, a lawyer asked about the reasons why companies would pursue an acqui-hire as opposed to a straight hire stated immediately that it was to protect against a lawsuit. When we then asked if he had ever heard of an investor suing its founders, however, the attorney acknowledged that he had not. Interview #9. 107 The concern in this context about entrepreneurial opportunism is ironic because much of the venture capital literature focuses on the opportunities for the investors to act opportunistically at the expense of the entrepreneurs. See, e.g., Bernard S. Black & Ronald J. Gilson, Venture Capital and the Structure of Capital Markets: Banks Versus Stock Markets, 47
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hires may be preferred in part because entrepreneurs derive significantly more prestige in Silicon Valley by “selling” their company to a prominent technology company than they do by quitting the start-up to accept a new job with that same company. In addition, the culture of Silicon Valley and its legal community encourage entrepreneurs to take a cooperative—rather than an adversarial— view of venture capital transactions, which we believe also encourages acqui-hiring. We then supplement this norms-based account of acqui-hiring by identifying two factors that reduce the perceived and actual costs of acqui-hiring to the engineers. Well-established cognitive biases, for example, may lead the engineers to undervalue the costs they incur when funds are deflected to investors and other shareholders in an acqui-hire. In addition, tax considerations reduce the actual costs incurred by the engineers because acqui-hires convert ordinary income into capital gains. Our theory of acqui-hiring, therefore, is that acqui-hires occur because the aggregate of the benefits described in the previous paragraph exceed the costs to the engineers, after those costs have been adjusted to take account of cognitive biases and tax effects. A. Informal Sanctions and Reputational Harm Because the ability to enforce covenants not to compete is strictly limited by California law, it is difficult to negotiate adequate ex ante protections against defections by at-will employees. The contracts negotiated between Silicon Valley investors and entrepreneurs are thus incomplete in that they do not address this contingency.108 In the absence of any contractual provisions that inhibit defections, investors have no formal legal protections apart from those identified in Part II, which they are generally loath to pursue.109 Nevertheless, acqui-hiring transactions are commonplace in Silicon Valley, while mass defections appear to be quite rare. To explain this anomaly, we argue that it is necessary to look past the formal means of enforcing contractual obligations and look instead to informal mechanisms.110 In developing this argument, we draw upon a rich literature that explains the relationship between formal legal rules and institutions, on the one hand, and social norms and informal sanctioning regimes, on the other. Robert Ellickson famously argued, for example, that ranchers and farmers in Shasta County, California rely on informal social norms—as opposed to formal legal rules—to resolve disputes arising out of the construction of boundary fences.111 Lisa Bernstein
J. FIN. ECON. 243, 252-53 (1998) (discussing reputational constraints on venture capitalist opportunism). But see Fried & Ganor, supra note __, at 990 (discussing entrepreneurial entrepreneurism). 108 See Mark P. Gergen, The Use of Open Terms in Contract, 92 COLUM. L. REV. 997, 999 (1992) (describing an incomplete contract as “any contract short of the ideal of a complete contingent contract, which has been drafted with all contingencies in mind and provides for optimal performance on every contingency”). We discuss some possible contractual protections that may benefit investors in Part IV.B. As discussed above, it is rare for individuals who go to work for start-ups to be required to sign employment agreements. Consequently, it is unclear whether the investors would be adequately protected even if California enforced non-competes. See Darian M. Ibrahim & D. Gordon Smith, Entrepreneurs on Horseback: Reflections on the Organization of Law, 50 ARIZ. L. REV. 71, 71 (2008). 109 See Part II. The incentive compensation that is given to start-up employees is relevant to the contingency defection because it encourages these employees to remain with the company. But in cases where the start-up is failing or going sideways, the typical fact pattern in which an acqui-hire occurs, such compensation is largely ineffective. 110 We make no claim that these dynamics are unique to Silicon Valley or to the technology industry. There are doubtless other industries where informal sanctions may play a similar role in determining the manner in which an employee chooses to leave one firm for another. 111 See generally ROBERT C. ELLICKSON, ORDER WITHOUT LAW: HOW NEIGHBORS SETTLE DISPUTES (1991).

likewise concluded that social norms play a critical role in resolving disputes between merchants in the diamond and cotton trades.112 And, in his classic account, Stuart Macauley found that businessmen in Wisconsin in the early 1960s virtually never turned to litigation to resolve their disputes, preferring to rely instead on informal sanctioning regimes.113 These and other case studies provide rich accounts of the role played by social norms in shaping behavior across a number of different communities. Other scholars have, in turn, drawn upon these and other studies to advance theoretical frameworks to explain when parties will choose to rely on informal sanctions instead of formal legal sanctions. David Charny, for example, has argued that the decision to enforce an agreement via formal or informal means will depend on “the costs of gathering information and of drafting and enforcing agreements.”114 Ronald Gilson, Charles Sable, and Robert Scott have shown how parties sometimes “braid” together formal and informal mechanisms for enforcing contractual commitments.115 Amid this widespread interest in social norms, the focus has been on the role played by these norms in resolving disputes without resort to litigation. In this Section, we advance the novel claim that these norms can lead, and have lead, to parties choosing to utilize a unique transaction structure to prevent a dispute from arising in the first place. There are, broadly speaking, three types of informal sanctions that may be imposed by one party (here, the investors) upon another (the entrepreneur) if the latter were to defect to another company.116 First, investors could threaten to refuse to finance the entrepreneur’s subsequent endeavors. This threat is amplified by the possibility that other investors might learn about the entrepreneur’s defection and similarly refuse to invest. Second, investors may appeal to the entrepreneur’s sense of moral obligation towards those who have backed her and her venture. Third, investors may threaten to ostracize the defecting entrepreneur from a particular social community. In our interviews, we found that each of these three informal sanctioning methods plays an important role in promoting the acqui-hire in Silicon Valley. 1. Future Dealings One potential constraint on the willingness of an entrepreneur to act opportunistically is the threat that the investor will refuse to deal with him in the future.117 When an engineer at a start-up
Lisa Bernstein, Private Commercial Law in the Cotton Industry: Creating Cooperation Through Rules, Norms, and Institutions, 99 MICH. L. REV. 1724, 1745-1762 (2001); Lisa Bernstein, Opting Out of the Legal System: Extralegal Contractual Relations in the Diamond Industry, 21 J. LEGAL STUD. 115, 138 (1992); see also Eric A. Feldman, The Tuna Court: Laws and Norms in the World's Premier Fish Market, 94 CAL. L. REV. 313, 314 (2006) (examining “whether, when, [and] why informal norms rather than state created law prevail in certain settings”). 113 Stewart Macaulay, Non-Contractual Relations in Business: A Preliminary Study, 28 AM. SOC. REV. 55, 63 (1963). 114 David Charny, Nonlegal Sanctions in Commercial Relationships, 104 HARV. L. REV. 373, 392 (1990) (analyzing the use of non-legal sanctions). 115 Ronald J. Gilson, Charles F. Sable & Robert E. Scott, Braiding: The Interaction of Formal and Informal Contracting in Theory, Practice, and Doctrine, 110 COLUM. L. REV. 1377 (2010); Robert E. Scott, A Theory of Self-Enforcing Indefinite Agreements, 103 COLUM. L. REV. 1641, 1675-92 (2003) (discussing relationship between formal and informal enforcement of deliberately indefinite agreements). 116 Gilson et al., supra note __, at 1392-93 (2010); see also Charny, supra note _, at 392-397 (offering typology of non-legal sanctions); ELLICKSON, supra note __, at 131 (same). 117 Gilson et al., supra note __, at 1392; see also Charny, supra note __, at 393 (“[Another] type of nonlegal sanction is loss of reputation among market participants . . . . If the promisor improperly breaches his commitments, he damages his reputation and thereby loses valuable opportunities for future trade.”).
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chooses to accept a position at a large technology company, neither party is under any illusion that this will be a lifelong partnership. The standard employee retention package contains restricted stock that vests over a period of three or four years. Interviewees explained that it would be relatively common for an acqui-hired entrepreneur to leave the buyer at the end of the vesting period, if not sooner, to launch another new start-up.118 In fact, several former founders mentioned that they viewed their current employment at large technology companies as a way station between start-up ventures. Whether an entrepreneur will be able to raise funds for a new venture will depend, at least in part, on his relationship with the investors who had funded his last venture. “When you start a company,” we were told, “the first place you look is to the people who funded you the last time.” 119 Even if these previous investors decline to invest, their opinions will still affect the ability of the venture to obtain funding. In Silicon Valley, previous investors often vouch for an entrepreneur and also provide leads and recommendations for funding when they are unwilling or unable to invest themselves.120 Entrepreneurs who aspire someday to start another venture will therefore desire to remain on good terms with their previous investors. In game theoretic terms, the relationship between the entrepreneur and the investing community in Silicon Valley is a multi-stage game where the optimal strategy may not be to maximize one’s winnings in the first round of the game. 121 A desire on the part of the entrepreneur to maintain his reputation, we were told repeatedly, can and does serve to check his incentive to extract everything he can from the current venture.122 This may explain the

Whether this will in fact occur in the majority of cases is open to debate. See Darian M. Ibrahim, The (Not So) Puzzling Behavior of Angel Investors, 61 VAND. L. REV. 1405, 1435 n.155 (2008) (noting that “there is some question as to whether the typical entrepreneur is a ‘serial’ entrepreneur”). Nevertheless, the culture of Silicon Valley lionizes the serial entrepreneur, and this perception tends to inform the expectations of both the buyer and the entrepreneur. 119 Interview #6. 120 Interview #1; see also WPP Luxembourg Gamma Three Sarl v. Spot Runner, Inc., 655 F.3d 1039, 1045 (9th Cir. 2011) cert. denied, 11-1069, 2012 WL 645058 (June 4, 2012) (noting claim that entrepreneur concealed potentially fraudulent activities from its investors because he wanted to use the good reputation of the investors to attract additional investors). 121 Several interviewees noted that the entrepreneur’s perspective shifts when his individual payout hits about $10m. At this point, there is enough money at play that the entrepreneur will start to view the negotiations as a single-play game. As discussed above, however, it is rare for an acqui-hiring deal to generate an individual payout that is this large. 122 It is possible, though unlikely, that the acqui-hire will diminish in importance because reputation becomes less important as a constraint on entrepreneurial opportunism in Silicon Valley. As communities grow larger, information about potential business partners often becomes more costly both to obtain and verify. See Barak D. Richman, Firms, Courts, and Reputation Mechanisms: Towards a Positive Theory of Private Ordering, 104 COLUM. L. REV. 2328, n. 36 (2004); Lior Jacob Strahilevitz, Social Norms from Close-Knit Groups to Loose-Knit Groups, 70 U. CHI. L. REV. 359, 365 n.31 (2003) If those reputational constraints that currently exist in Silicon Valley were to grow weaker as a result of an increase in the size of this community, then one might expect to see fewer acqui-hires and more defections, as well as more litigation over defections. This reputational argument must account, however, for the fact that Silicon Valley has already undergone tremendous growth over the past few decades. Between 1975 and 2010, for example, the number of venture capital firms in Silicon Valley increased from 38 to 718. Between 1975 and 2008, the number of lawyers in Palo Alto— considered by many to be the heart of the Silicon Valley legal community—grew from 489 to 2156. This growth notwithstanding, reputation still appears to matter a great deal in Silicon Valley. The key to understanding this apparent incongruity is to recognize the role played by technology in facilitating the transmission of information. Cf. Charny, supra note __, at 419 (arguing that “mass markets based on reputational bonds are feasible only with technology that conveys information cheaply to a large group of transactors, such as computers used to monitor creditworthiness or mass media used in advertising”). The fact that not all members of a community personally interact with one another on a regular basis matters little if these same individuals have access to and regularly internalize the same information. So
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prevalence of the acqui-hire structure, in which part of a portion of the compensation package is effectively deflected to the investors, as contrasted with the defection model, in which the newlyhired engineer keeps everything. The power of reputation as a check on entrepreneurial opportunism appears to vary with the prominence of the investor in the original venture. If the investor is Sequoia Capital—perhaps the best-known venture capital firm in Silicon Valley—then we were told that the entrepreneur will go to great lengths to end the current venture on good terms. In the acqui-hiring context, this would mean making sure that Sequoia received a payout from the buyer large enough for Sequoia to feel as though it had been treated fairly. If, on the other hand, the investor is a small-time angel investor, then the entrepreneur will be less concerned about leaving on good terms. Such an angel investor might be unable to finance any future ventures and, moreover, would be a small enough player that any negative assessment would not generate traction in the Silicon Valley investor community. 123 Between these two extremes—Sequoia and the novice angel—there is obviously a wide range. In all cases, however, it seems that entrepreneurs try to figure out, as one interviewee put it, “the lowest amount that can be paid to investors so that they don’t squawk.”124 2. Loyalty Another informal constraint on the willingness of an entrepreneur to act opportunistically is the person’s own sense of loyalty to her investors and a desire to see herself as trustworthy.125 In many cases, the investor is much more than merely a source of capital. The investor is also a trusted counselor, a valued source of industry contacts, and a partner in a shared undertaking.126 If a large technology company were to contact the founders with job offers, it would not be an easy decision simply to abandon the investor and move elsewhere with their team, even if nothing in any of the
long as information about past behavior is reliably conveyed to all or a significant portion of the community, then it is irrelevant whether it is conveyed over a backyard fence or via a blog like TechCrunch. 123 See Darian M. Ibrahim, The (Not So) Puzzling Behavior of Angel Investors, 61 VAND. L. REV. 1405, 1435-36 (2008) (discussing other constraints on the ability of angel investors to utilize reputational sanctions against opportunistic entrepreneurs). 124 Interview #8. The discussion above suggests that acqui-hiring is promoted by the engineers’ desire to preserve their reputation among investors. This raises the question of whether buyers similarly desire to maintain a good reputation with venture capitalists. On this question, acqui-hiring participants expressed contrasting views. One person believed that that buyers did strive to maintain good relations with the prominent angels and the VC funds and would prefer an acqui-hire transaction structure precisely for this reason. Interview #16. Others, however, were skeptical of the notion that buyers choose to structure transactions as acqui-hires to maintain good relations with investors. One interviewee familiar with the workings of the corporate development group at a large technology company demurred when asked about whether buyers are concerned about their reputation among investors, stating simply that “[a]t the end of the day the job is to figure out the right value for everything” and that “[t]here are very few deals where everyone is happy.” Given that large technology companies currently have such enormous purchasing power and are making so many acquisitions, see Raice, supra note __ (describing the M&A frenzy by large technology companies and its accelerating pace and reporting that Google and Facebook closed 13 and 12 acquisitions, respectively, in the first quarter of 2012 alone), it is not surprising that they may not be overly concerned about their reputation among venture capitalists. In any event, it is safe to say that reputational concerns promote acqui-hiring, but that those concerns are generally much more significant to the engineers than to the buyers. 125 Gilson et al., supra note __, at 1393; Charny, supra note __, at 393-94 (“[Another] type of nonlegal sanction is the sacrifice of psychic and social goods. The breaching promisor may suffer . . . loss of self-esteem, feelings of guilt, or an unfulfilled desire to think of himself as trustworthy and competent.”). 126 Jesse M. Fried & Mira Ganor, Agency Costs of Venture Capitalist Control in Startups, 81 N.Y.U. L. REV. 967, 969 (2006) (“VCs also provide valuable management and strategic advice to these startups, many of which are founded by entrepreneurs with little business experience.”).

investment agreements expressly forbade it. Indeed, many entrepreneurs would view a decision to defect to another company when there exists at least the possibility of recovering a portion of the investor’s investment as supremely disloyal. As one entrepreneur explained, “A founder wants to do right by anyone who has invested in him. He would like to at least get the money back for his investors.”127 While doubtless there are entrepreneurs who feel little sense of loyalty to their investors, there are some who would prefer an acqui-hire transaction to a defection precisely because it allows the investor to recoup some or all of her investment or perhaps even make a profit.128 One entrepreneur whose company was acqui-hired told us that he had fought to make sure that his investors got their money back not because he was looking ahead to his next venture but simply because it was “the right thing to do.”129 According to a venture capitalist who has been involved in a number of acqui-hiring transactions: “Often the [entrepreneurs] do feel loyalties to their investors to not abandon them unless [the investors] can get their money back or some portion thereof, so they hold the acquirer ‘hostage’ to doing that if it wants them to work there.”130 Whether one labels this impulse “loyalty,” “fairness” or simply a desire to “do the right thing,” there is little question that it can and does serve as a check on profit-maximization by entrepreneurs in some cases. In addition to the desire to do right by the investors, founders may also feel a moral obligation to those employees at the start-up who will not be hired by the buyer. These employees will frequently own small equity stakes in the start-up. In an acqui-hire transaction, they may receive some portion of the deal consideration, though they will receive none of the compensation pool. On the other hand, in a defection these employees receive nothing. Like the investors, these employees believed in the founders, and they also probably sacrificed pay and other opportunities to join the start-up. To repay this loyalty, some founders may prefer acqui-hiring over a defection even though it reduces their own personal gains.131 3. Social Sanctions A third potential constraint on short-term profit-maximization by entrepreneurs is the threat of social sanctions.132 Social sanctions bring about compliance with a community norm by shaming noncompliant individuals and excluding them from the social benefits of belonging to a group.133 This particular constraint is perhaps most relevant in the context of angel investors, precisely the type of investors who may find it quite difficult to impose meaningful reputational sanctions. The academic literature suggests that angel investors tend to invest in people and businesses that are
Interview #4. The degree of loyalty that an entrepreneur feels towards an investor will depend on any number of factors, including the length of the relationship and the extent to which the investor has devoted her time and energy to the start-up. Where a start-up is acqui-hired six months after its founding, and where the investor has come to only six board meetings and has not been meaningfully involved with the company, the entrepreneurs are likely to feel less loyalty than where the relationship has been longer and more meaningful. Interview #15. 129 Interview #12. 130 Interview #1. 131 Interview #4. 132 Gilson et al., supra note __, at 1389. 133 Id. at 1393; Bernstein, supra note __, at 1749 (observing that “a transactor’s . . . position in the community, and his social connections were intertwined with his business reputation, making breach of contract something that would hurt not only his business prospects but also his standing in his social community”).
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geographically proximate to their homes.134 This makes it easier for angels to monitor the companies in which they invest and also to impose social sanctions on those entrepreneurs who act opportunistically. One angel investor, for example, told us that he invests with people only if he knows where they live. If a start-up fails notwithstanding the entrepreneur’s best efforts, then there will be no hard feelings.135 If, however, the start-up fails because the entrepreneur shirked, or because he defected to a large technology company with the engineering team without making any effort to ensure that the investor is appropriately rewarded, then social sanctions could be imposed. While the social sanctions that could be levied in a relatively large community such as Silicon Valley pale in comparison to those that can be leveled by more homogenous and close-knit communities, there is little doubt that the threat of social sanctions may, in some cases, encourage entrepreneurs to choose an acqui-hire over a defection.136 B. Optics and Reputational Benefits In addition to enabling entrepreneurs to avoid reputational harm, the sale of a company pursuant to an acqui-hire may also play a role in improving the reputation of those entrepreneurs in the Silicon Valley community. There is a cultural cachet that comes with selling your start-up to a large, prominent company, particularly in Silicon Valley.137 In fact, one lawyer suggested that the social status that entrepreneurs derive from being able to claim that they sold their company could be the primary factor promoting acqui-hires.138 Certainly an acqui-hire is a more positive story than the one that would accompany a defection. As one investor put it: “[I]t’s a lot cooler to say you ‘sold’ your company even if everyone lost money than to say your company was an utter failure and you put it into liquidation proceedings and grabbed a nice offer from Google.”139 Or as another interviewee explained, “The talent wants the mystique of having been ‘bought out.’”140 Or as still another interviewee observed: “Some of these ‘acqui-hires’ are cosmetic things. It's not really much of an acquisition at all but just an assuming of employees with some modest signing bonuses and retention payments. Then you add

Andrew Wong, Angel Finance: The Other Venture Capital, in CUMMINGS, supra note __, at 75. See Bahrami & Evans, supra note __, at 177 (“In Silicon Valley there is no stigma attached to honest failure, although there is for resting on one’s laurels or not playing the game.”). 136 Interview #9; see also John Seely-Brown, Forward in UNDERSTANDING SILICON VALLEY: THE ANATOMY OF AN ENTREPRENEURIAL REGION xii (Martin Kenney, ed., 2000) (“Even at a more informal level, however—at parties, at restaurants, at sports events, at your kid’s school—you discover whom you need to meet [in Silicon Valley], who is worth working with, whom you should avoid, etc.”); cf. Bernstein, supra note __, at __ (discussing exclusion of daughters from debutante balls as a form of social sanctioning utilized by cotton merchants). 137 Interview #9 (“After you tell someone that you sold your company, it is rare that you get to the next level of conversation. Nobody ever asks you how much you sold it for or whether you screwed your investors.”). 138 Interview #11. Indeed, sometimes people stretch the definition of acqui-hire to the point that it is used to cover even transactions where no acquisition actually occurs. This is almost certainly a result of the desire to be able to claim that one’s company was acquired. 139 Interview #1. 140 Interview #3.
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all of this stuff up and send out a press release that says you were acquired for $8 million when in reality that’s the value of the stock those employees would have gotten anyway for joining.”141 The optics can also have an impact on the ability of the entrepreneur to receive financing for her next project.142 “You’re more likely to be backed the next time you have a startup if you have an ‘exit’ under your belt,” one interviewee explained.143 “Most good investors can tell the difference [between a real acquisition and an acqui-hire] but many don’t bother to do the research - especially at the angel stage.”144 The optics of an acqui-hire can also be beneficial to investors, albeit to a lesser extent. Individuals and firms who invest in early stage companies expect the vast majority of these companies ultimately to fail. They continue to make investments, however, in the hopes of investing in “home runs” that will return as much as thirty times their initial investment or more. Against this backdrop, these investors tend to view companies that are acqui-hired as not meaningfully different from those companies that fail. When the measure of success is a 30x return, then the difference between a portfolio company that is a complete loss and one that “goes sideways” is immaterial. Nevertheless, there are some non-financial benefits that flow to investors as a result of acqui-hires.145 From the perspective of an angel or VC trying to convince an entrepreneur to partner with him over other investors or of a VC raising capital for a new fund, it is better to be able say that a portfolio company was acquired by Google than to say that it failed, even if the economics between the two outcomes are not materially different. As one interviewee explained: “The exit is worth something. Particularly for [venture capital] funds in progress, the scorecard may ignore the money and say that four [portfolio companies] are dead, three are exited, and seven are alive. The exits matter.”146 Because investors would always prefer an acqui-hire (in which they receive at least some consideration) over a defection (in which they receive nothing), the investors’ preference for the optics of acqui-hires is not directly relevant to the puzzle we are exploring. Recall, however, that reputational concerns can cause engineers to prefer acqui-hires at the margin. Because investors place some value on the optics of acqui-hires, the amount that must be paid to investors to keep them from squawking is reduced. In some cases, the optics premium that investors receive might

Interview #1; see also Paul Graham, Hiring is Obsolete, May 2005, at http://www.paulgraham.com/hiring.html (“Often big companies buy startups before they’re profitable . . . . What they want is the development team and the software they’ve built so far. When a startup gets bought for 2 or 3 million six months in, it's really more of a hiring bonus than an acquisition.”). 142 The optical benefits from acqui-hiring may diminish over time as the phenomenon receives greater attention and scrutiny. If acqui-hires become known as simply dressed-up defections, rather than real “exits,” the cultural cachet of doing an acqui-hire will likely diminish. In fact, the popular press now sometimes explicitly distinguishes between acquihires and real acquisitions in reporting on Silicon Valley M&A activity. See, e.g., Laurie Segall, Facebook Acquires Facial Recognition Startup Face.com, CNNMoney (June 18, 2012) (noting, in reporting that Facebook acquired Face.com that “Facebook is famous for doing ‘acqui-hires,’ scooping up talented staff and then shutting down their services, but a source close to Facebook emphasized that Face.com’s technology will remain intact”). 143 Interview #1. 144 Id. 145 Interview #6 (“An exit is currency. You can trade on this. The investors want to be able to say that the company was acquired by Google.”); Interview #11 (“It is important to the investors to be able to say that the company was acquired by a larger company.”). 146 Interview #5.
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bridge the gap between the amount that the engineers and buyers are willing to deflect to investors and the amount that investors would view as minimally acceptable. C. The Culture of Silicon Valley and its Legal Community In addition to the reputational considerations previously described, the prevalence of acquihiring may also be attributable to cultural norms that are unique to Silicon Valley. The culture of Silicon Valley has been described as one that generally “depicts venture capital transactions as being natural and desirable rather than as being ‘evil’ . . . and oppositional.” 147 In such a culture, one would expect transaction structures that promote cooperation between investors and entrepreneurs to evolve as a means of discouraging “an antagonistic style where you fight for every nickel on the table.”148 The acqui-hire, on this account, serves to reinforce prevailing community norms by making it possible for the investors to receive some return on their investment even if the start-up’s founders choose to leave and accept lucrative employment at large technology companies. How are these non-adversarial norms maintained and transmitted to new arrivals in the community?149 A study by Mark Suchman and Mia Cahill argues that this task is achieved in significant part through the efforts of Silicon Valley lawyers.150 In their words: Silicon Valley lawyers work to ‘civilize’ their clienteles, indoctrinating new entrants into the routines and vocabularies of the local business community. In a setting where the rapid influx of companies and technologies threatens to undermine social coherence, law firms help to define and communicate the socially constructed boundaries of ‘reasonable’ behavior . . . . [S]uch ministrations increase the likelihood that financial transactions will reflect the cultural norms of the community rather than the individual interests of the client.151
Mark C. Suchman & Mia L. Cahill, The Hired Gun as Facilitator: Lawyers and the Suppression of Business Disputes, 21 LAW & SOC. INQUIRY 679, 700 (1996) (quoting a Silicon Valley attorney as stating that venture financing “is not an adversarial process” and that “[p]eople who view it properly . . . realize that they are creating a very long-term partnership between venture capitalists on the one hand and the entrepreneurs on the other”); Mark C. Suchman, Dealmakers and Counselors: Law Firms as Intermediaries in the Development of Silicon Valley, in UNDERSTANDING SILICON VALLEY, supra note __, at 87 (quoting a California attorney as stating that “I feel like our office in Newport Beach had a sort of missionary mode—to at least encourage the entrepreneurs to consider that venture capital could be an alternative, because some of the other options are really awful”); cf. Craig W. Johnson, Advising the New Economy: The Role of Lawyers, in THE SILICON VALLEY EDGE: A HABITAT FOR INNOVATION AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP 334 (Chung-Moon Lee et al., eds, 2000) (“In environments like Silicon Valley . . . lawyers are prized for their ‘win/win’ attitude and an ability to keep everyone focused on common goals and make things happen smoothly. Contentiousness, formality, an emphasis on status, and unpleasantness are all qualities that will drive clients away.”). 148 Id. at 700 (quoting Silicon Valley lawyer) (internal quotation marks omitted). 149 John McMillan & Christopher Woodruff, Private Order Under Dysfunctional Public Order, 98 MICH. L. REV. 2421, 2435-37 (2000) (discussing ways in which norms are transmitted). 150 Mark C. Suchman & Mia L. Cahill, The Hired Gun as Facilitator: Lawyers and the Suppression of Business Disputes, 21 LAW & SOC. INQUIRY 679, 699-701 (1996); see also Smith, supra note __, at 154 n.82 (“It is far from obvious that the reputational constraints on venture capitalists and entrepreneurs are much greater than other potential litigants in American society. Perhaps the relatively modest appeal to litigation results from the moderating role of venture capital lawyers.”); Broughman, supra note __, at 353 (“[E]ven though entrepreneurs may not be repeat players, they are typically represented by repeat player law firms that are actively engaged in VC. Such law firms may bolster the effectiveness of entrepreneurial business norms.”). 151 Id. at 701 (emphasis added). Suchman and Cahill acknowledge that attorneys that adopt this ethos “tread[] near the boundaries of conventional legal ethics” and yet argue that “such social regulation may be the price for a viable market.” Id.
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Specifically, Suchman and Cahill argue that Silicon Valley attorneys further non-adversarial community norms by assessing the litigiousness of their clients before agreeing to make introductions to investors they know,152 advising their clients as to whether certain deal terms and valuations are reasonable,153 and encouraging the use of certain types of transaction structures.154 In sum, Suchman and Cahill argue that Silicon Valley lawyers are key players in an “informal apparatus of socialization, coordination, and normalization that serves to avert potential disputes between members of the local business community.”155 Although Suchman and Cahill conducted their interviews and published their study well before the current wave of acqui-hires began, their claim that Silicon Valley lawyers encourage the use of transaction structures that reflect the non-adversarial norms of the local community helps to explain the widespread use of the acqui-hire, a transaction structure whose primary purpose appears to be to preserve good relations between investors and entrepreneurs. While none of our interviewees specifically endorsed the sociological account offered by Suchman and Cahill, several lawyers with whom we spoke referenced “the culture of Silicon Valley” as an important factor in promoting the use of the acqui-hire.156 If Cahill and Suchman are correct that community norms support a non-adversarial approach toward venture finance, then the widespread use of the acquihire may also be attributable, at least in part, to these norms. * * *

The norms-based account outlined above, we believe, goes a long way towards explaining the acqui-hiring puzzle. The effective threat of various non-legal sanctions serves to deter opportunistic defection on the part of the entrepreneurs. At the same time, these entrepreneurs derive social status when they sell a company, which encourages the use of the acqui-hire transaction structure. These entrepreneurs are, finally, steeped in a culture that promotes cooperative, rather than adversarial, relationships with investors. These various effects, significantly, operate outside the formal legal system, which means that the story of acqui-hiring is, at least in part, a story about the triumph of social norms over legal rules. In order to fully explain the acqui-hiring phenomenon, however, we believe it is necessary to supplement this norms-based account with two additional arguments. First, we draw upon the behavioral law and economics literature to contend that the structure of acqui-hiring—which diverts funds from the engineers before they receive those funds—reduces the perceived cost of acqui-hiring. Second, we argue that tax considerations often reduce the actual cost of engaging in an acqui-hire because they convert ordinary income into capital gains. Although neither of these two factors, standing alone, is likely to lead engineers to prefer an acqui-hire to a straight hire, each functions to

As one lawyer who represents entrepreneurs told Suchman and Cahill, “if a client comes in, we want to know whether they’re litigious. Frequently, the lawyer carries the ball for the client, in terms of opening up connections and introducing the client to the business world. We want to make sure that we’re not making an introduction that will ultimately backfire on us.” Id. at 699. 153 Id. at 700-701. 154 Id. at 700; see also id. at 701 (“More generally, Silicon Valley lawyers facilitate smoothly functioning capital markets by socializing entrepreneurs in the conventions of the local investor community.”). 155 Id. at 683. 156 Interview #6; Interview #9
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make the acqui-hire more palatable to the engineers weighing the costs and benefits of the acquihire. 157 D. Prospect Theory An acqui-hire, as compared to a straight hire, diverts a portion of the purchase price paid by the buyer from the engineers to the investors and other shareholder employees.158 The diverted portion of the buyer’s purchase price is not, however, first received by the engineers and then paid over by them.159 Instead, the diverted portion goes straight from the buyer to the investors and other shareholders. Because the diverted portion of the purchase price is never actually received by the engineers, the engineers are unlikely to mentally code that consideration as ever having “belonged” to them. Therefore, they will not perceive those funds as having been lost. Prospect theory, a behavioral economic theory first developed by Nobel Prize winners Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky,160 suggests that, for most people, “[f]oregone gains are less painful than perceived losses.”161 Engineers will thus tend to undervalue the costs that they incur from acqui-hiring, as compared to an equivalent transaction where they received the buyer’s entire purchase price and then paid investors and other shareholders out of their own pockets, because the former costs are perceived as foregone losses. Thus, the cognitive biases underlying prospect theory promote acquihiring. One question is whether engineers might be able to mentally reframe a proposed acquihiring transaction so that they could fully appreciate the associated cost. Legal counsel could, for example, help to focus engineers on the fact that foregoing compensation in an acqui-hire is the

Our interviewees also mentioned two other factors that encourage the use of acqui-hiring at the margin. First, several individuals noted that the acqui-hire structure made it easier for buyers to differentiate the pay packages of similarly situated engineers. In a straight hire, any differentiation would have to be made in the engineer’s compensation package, which would disrupt the buyer’s existing compensation hierarchy. In an acqui-hire, differentiation could be accomplished through the deal consideration and therefore would not (at least superficially) disrupt the hierarchy. Acqui-hiring therefore provides greater flexibility to buyers in designing pay packages for talented engineers. Interviews #7; #17. Second, we were told that it was not uncommon for the buyer in an acqui-hire to require the engineers to sign a covenant not to compete in connection with the transaction. Interview #17. Such a covenant would typically restrict the ability of the engineer to compete with the buyer for one to two years after he left the employ of the buyer. Although the ability to enforce covenants not to compete is strictly limited under California law, these covenants may be enforced when they are executed in connection with the sale of a business. See supra note 78. An acqui-hire is a sale of a business and, therefore, it could trigger an enforceable non-compete covenant. Therefore, one additional virtue of an acqui-hire from the perspective of the buyer is that it allows for these enforceable covenants, which would not be available if the engineer had been poached. Our interviewees emphasized, however, that these two factors, while supporting acqui-hiring at the margin, were much less important than the reputational factors discussed above. 158 See Part I.C. 159 Id. 160 Daniel Kahneman & Amos Tversky, Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision Under Risk, 47 ECONOMETRICA 263 (1979); see also DANIEL KANNEMAN, THINKING FAST AND SLOW (2011) (discussing prospect theory). 161 Daniel Kahneman et al., Anomalies: The Endowment Effect, Loss Aversion, and Status Quo Bias, 5 J. ECON. PERSP. 193, 203 (1991); see also Lee Anne Fennell, Death, Taxes, and Cognition, 81 N.C. L. REV. 567, 643 (2003) (“Because people tend to find a loss more painful than a failure to secure an equivalent gain, a frame that presents the tax as reducing a gain rather than generating a loss might be expected to make the tax more palatable.”).
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same as receiving compensation and then paying it over.162 Yet, the engineers in an acqui-hire are not typically represented by counsel.163 They instead rely on the start-up’s company counsel to represent their personal interests in the acqui-hire negotiations along with those of the start-up.164 Company counsel would not, however, usually be helpful to the engineers in assessing the true cost of acqui-hiring because the counsel’s client is the start-up, and the start-up would always prefer an acqui-hire to a straight hire. A lawyer tasked solely with representing the engineers, by contrast, would be under no obligation to be loyal to the start-up and would, presumably, encourage the entrepreneurs to at least consider the possibility of a straight hire. Because of the absence of such an independent lawyer in acqui-hire transactions, the engineers might not be fully aware of the straight hire alternative to the acqui-hire, although one suspects that representatives of the buyer might take it upon themselves to raise this possibility.165 Nevertheless, even if the engineers are aware of the straight hire alternative, the absence of independent counsel could make it more difficult for the engineers to mentally reframe an acqui-hire to overcome cognitive bias. E. Tax Considerations While prospect theory suggests that the engineer’s perceived cost of acqui-hiring will often be lower than the actual cost, tax considerations reduce the actual cost.166 In a straight hire transaction, all of the consideration received by the engineer via the compensation pool is generally taxed as compensation income, which is subject to a maximum rate of approximately 45 percent.167 On the other hand, in an acqui-hire, the portion of the deal consideration that ultimately flows to the engineer is characterized as capital gains, which is subject to a maximum rate of approximately 22 percent.168 Thus, by engaging in an acqui-hire and by shifting part of the buyer’s purchase price

Cf. Jonathan R. Macey, Packaged Preferences and the Institutional Transformation of Interests, 61 U. CHI. L. REV. 1443, 1477-78 (1994) (suggesting that institutional agents such as attorneys can be help the principal overcome cognitive biases); Jeffrey R. Rachlinski, 70 S. CAL. L. REV. 113, 170-73 (1996) (explaining that litigators can help their clients overcome cognitive biases by reframing settlement offers that have been offered to them). 163 Interview #8. Although company counsel typically recommends that the entrepreneurs obtain their own counsel, this recommendation is rarely followed. Id. 164 Interview #8. 165 There are, of course, other possible sources of this information. The buyer, for example, has excellent incentives to educate the engineers as to the potential benefits of a straight hire as opposed to an acqui-hire. 166 Several acqui-hire participants confirmed that tax considerations played a role, but only after we brought up the subject of taxes. Interview #9; Interview #11. Only one participant spontaneously mentioned tax considerations as a significant factor that promotes acqui-hiring. Interview #13. 167 See I.R.C. § 1 (providing for maximum rate of 35% on ordinary income); § 3101(b)(6) (imposing Medicare tax on wages at a rate of 1.45% on employees). California’s maximum income tax rate is currently 10.3 percent; however, because state income taxes are deductible for federal income tax purposes, the effective tax rate will be somewhat lower, though the potential application of the alternative minimum tax complicates the computation of the effective rate. While all of the consideration paid by the buyer will generally be taxed as compensation income, the timing of the taxation will differ depending on the type of consideration. Cash salaries and bonuses (including signing bonuses) are taxable upon receipt, restricted stock is taxable upon vesting, and stock options are taxable upon exercise. Certain stock options, known as incentive stock options, can generate capital gains if certain conditions are satisfied. See I.R.C. § 421. 168 See I.R.C. § 1(h) (providing for maximum rate of 15% on long term capital gains). Employment taxes do not apply to capital gains. Cf. I.R.C. § 3101(b)(6) (imposing employment taxes only on wages). California taxes capital gains at the same rate as ordinary income; therefore the maximum California tax rate is 10.3%, though the effective rate will be somewhat lower due to the deductibility of California taxes for federal income tax purposes.
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to the deal consideration pool, the engineer cuts her tax rate approximately in half on the amounts that come back to her as payment for her equity interest in the start-up.169 For example, assume that an engineer could receive $1,000,000 of compensation income by engaging in a straight hire. Alternatively, the engineer could participate in an acqui-hire, in which case $300,000 of the buyer’s price that would have gone directly to her is shifted to the deal consideration. Assume further that the engineer’s share, in her capacity as a shareholder of the startup, of that $300,000 of deal consideration is $100,000. Under these facts, a straight hire would net the engineer approximately $550,000 after taxes. In the acqui-hire, the engineer would receive a net amount of $463,000.171 Thus, even though the engineer’s pre-tax cost from engaging in the acqui-hire was $200,000,172 the after-tax cost was only $87,000.173 The discrepancy is due to the fact that the $200,000 that she left on the table would have been taxed at 45 percent, leaving her with only $110,000 after-tax. She also shifted the character of $100,000 of her proceeds from compensation income to capital gains, which saved her $33,000 in taxes.174
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In this example, the tax benefit reduces the after-tax cost to the engineer of engaging in the acqui-hire.175 In other cases, it is possible that the acqui-hire could actually result in an after-tax gain. If the engineer in the example received back $250,000 of her compensation deflected to the deal consideration, rather than $100,000, then she would end up with after-tax gain of $30,000.176 Whether the engineer ends up with an after-tax gain or loss depends on how much of the deflected compensation gets returned to her as payment for her equity interest in the start-up, which depends on the investor’s preference rights and the engineer’s percentage common stock interest.

Cf. Victor Fleischer, Two and Twenty Taxing Partnership Profits In Private Equity Funds, 83 N.Y.U. L. REV. 1 (2008) (explaining how private equity fund managers likewise cut their effective tax rates on compensation in half by receiving their incentive compensation as a share of the fund’s profits). 170 $1,000,000 of compensation less 45% of $1,000,000 = $550,000. 171 ($700,000 of compensation less 45% of $700,000) + ($100,000 of capital gains less 22% of $100,000) = $463,000. 172 Pre-tax, the engineer received $1,000,000 from the straight hire and $800,000 ($700,000 as compensation and $100,000 as payment for her shares). 173 Her net after-tax recovery from the straight hire was $550,000, while it was $463,000 from the acqui-hire. 174 It is worth noting that, to calculate the net after-tax cost of an acqui-hire, the acqui-hire would have to be compared to a straight hire and that this comparison would involve a re-framing of the transaction that might solve the cognitive bias problem identified in the previous section. Thus, the engineers who are most afflicted by cognitive bias are not likely to be motivated by tax considerations and vice versa. 175In addition to reducing the after-cost to the engineers, it might appear that tax considerations promote acqui-hiring by allowing the buyer to obtain the benefits of the start-up company’s net operating losses (“NOLs”). However, preservation of these NOLs is unlikely to be a significant factor in structuring acqui-hiring transactions. First, the startup’s NOLs will succeed to the buyer only if the acqui-hire is structured as a stock deal or as a tax-free reorganization, see BORRIS I. BITTKER & LAWRENCE LOKKEN, FEDERAL INCOME TAXATION OF INCOME, ESTATES AND GIFTS (3d ed. 2003) ¶ 95.3, and acqui-hires are typically not structured in those ways. See supra notes 45-53 and accompanying text. Second, even if structured as a stock deal or a tax-free reorganization, the start-up company will have undergone an ownership change, which triggers substantial limitations on the ability of the buyer to utilize these NOLs going forward. See I.R.C. § 382. These limitations were designed precisely to ensure that acquisitive transactions do not occur for the purpose of utilizing the target’s NOLs. See Bittker & Lokken, supra ¶ 95.5.1 (“Congress sought a limitation that would make NOL carryovers a relatively neutral factor in acquisitions.”). 176 In the straight hire, she would end up with $550,000 after-tax. See supra note 170 and accompanying text. In the acqui-hire under the revised facts, she ends up with $580,000 after-tax: ($700,000 compensation less 45% tax on the $700,000) plus ($250,000 of capital gains less 22% tax on the $250,000) = $580,000.
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In any event, at a minimum, tax considerations reduce the actual cost of engaging in an acqui-hire, while they do not affect the reputational benefits from do so. Tax considerations, therefore, promote acqui-hiring, subject only to some technical caveats set forth in the Appendix 177

IV.

ALLOCATION AND INNOVATION

In the previous Parts, we identified a puzzle presented by the acqui-hiring phenomenon and provided our solution to that puzzle. In this Part, we address the most important issue common to all acqui-hiring transactions: how the aggregate purchase price paid by the buyer is allocated between the deal consideration and the compensation pool. This issue is important because it determines how much of the buyer’s purchase price is ultimately received by the engineers and how much is received by the investors and other employees of the start-up. In the discussion below, we first predict that a norm of investors getting their money back in acqui-hires will eventually develop. We then propose several contractual innovations that may enable investors to increase their proportional allocation of the aggregate purchase price. A. Allocation of Consideration As we have previously discussed, the critical economic issue in an acqui-hire is the allocation of the buyer’s purchase price between the deal consideration pool and the compensation pool. In a true acquisition, the amount of deal consideration would equal the value of the start-up’s assets (less any liabilities assumed by the buyer). But in an acqui-hire, the start-up, by definition, has few if any valuable assets. The deal consideration is simply a mechanism to pay off the investors in order for the entrepreneurs to obtain the reputational benefits described in Part III. Because the deal consideration buys these intangible benefits instead of actual assets, pricing is a difficult exercise. Furthermore, the fact that the engineers could simply defect without risk of legal sanction makes negotiations over the allocation unique. After all, if the investors push too hard, the engineers could conclude that the reputational benefits from an acqui-hire are no longer worth the cost. In essence, the question is how much the investors should be paid in an acqui-hire. To preserve the reputation of the engineers, and to get the cooperation necessary to achieve the optics of an acquisition, the investors need to get paid an amount close to the amount to which the investors believe they are entitled. But how much should investors believe they are entitled? The situation is analogous to tipping of service providers. Social norms tell us that certain service providers should be tipped—even though tippers are not legally responsible for leaving a tip—and

These caveats do not affect the conclusion that tax considerations often promote acqui-hiring. At first glance, it might appear that one reason to structure an acqui-hire would be to preserve the start-up company’s net operating losses (“NOLs”). However, the start-up’s NOLs are unlikely to promote acqui-hires for two reasons. First, the start-up’s NOLs will succeed to the buyer only if the acqui-hire is structured as a stock deal or as a tax-free reorganization, see Borris I. Bittker & Lawrence Lokken, Federal Income Taxation of Income, Estates and Gifts (3d ed. 2003) ¶ 95.3, and acqui-hires are typically not structured in those ways. See supra notes 45-53 and accompanying text. Second, even if structured in this way, the start-up company will have undergone an ownership change, which triggers extremely onerous limitations on the future utilization by the buyer of the start-up company’s NOLs. See I.R.C. § 382. The limitation was intended precisely to ensure that acquisitive transactions do not occur merely for the purposes of utilizing the target’s NOLs. See Bittker & Lokken supra ¶ 95.5.1.
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that the amount of the tip is calculated based on what service providers expect to get tipped.178 Absent knowledge of the “typical” tip, however, how does one know when one has been left a tip that is exceedingly generous or insultingly low or just right? Theoretical arguments about the investor’s “proper” recovery do not help resolve the issue. On the one hand, the start-up has no valuable assets, and therefore the investors are entitled to very little, if any, of the total consideration. On the other hand, without the investors’ cash investment, the team of engineers would not have been built and that team would not have had the opportunity to showcase their abilities to the buyer. Accordingly, the investors should receive a not insignificant portion of the total consideration. Both sides have good fairness arguments, and there is no guidance about how to resolve the conflict. Two problems stem from the current state of ambiguity. First, it makes negotiations over allocations expensive and time-consuming. Second, by increasing the variance of possible outcomes, the ambiguity exposes the parties to additional, unwanted risk. One possible response to these inefficiencies would be the development of a rule of thumb, like the 15 to 20 percent norm for tipping in restaurants.179 If such a norm were to develop in the acqui-hiring context, the buyer and the engineers would have a much better sense for how much of the buyer’s consideration they would need to deflect to the investors, thereby reducing their negotiating costs and risk.180 Because of the increased efficiency, we predict that such a norm regarding allocations will eventually develop in acqui-hiring. Nevertheless, a rule of thumb does not appear to exist currently, or if it does exist, it is not yet very salient. Acqui-hiring participants with whom we spoke were emphatic that the economics of acqui-hire transactions were impossible to generalize and that pricing was always determined on a case-by-case basis. When we specifically asked about a rule of thumb, they universally denied that one existed.181 While participants initially declined to make generalizations about pricing, when pushed a number agreed that in several acqui-hires they had seen, the investors got back roughly their initial investment.182 This evidence suggests that a norm of investors getting their money back in acquihires might eventually develop. Under this norm, the allocation between the deal consideration and the compensation pool would be reverse-engineered to ensure that the investors got roughly their money back. An alternative would be for a norm to develop regarding the percentage of the buyer’s overall purchase price that should be allocated to the deal consideration pool.183

Yoram Margalioth, The Case Against Tipping, 9 U. PA. J. LAB. & EMP. L. 117, 118 (2006) ((“People typically tip fifteen to twenty percent of the bill (or double the sales tax plus change in places where the sales tax is around seven to eight percent), as long as the service is reasonable”) (citation omitted)). 179 See Margalioth, supra note __, at 118. 180 See generally William J. Baumol and Richard E. Quandt, Rules of Thumb and Optimally Imperfect Decisions, 54 AM. ECON. REV. 23 (1964) (discussing the efficiency of rules of thumb and the design of effective rules of thumb in the pricing context). 181 See, e.g., Interview #6; Interview #8; Interview #11. 182 Interview #8; Interview #11; Interview #14. 183 For example, the norm could be that 20 percent of the buyer’s aggregate purchase price should be allocated to the deal consideration pool.
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We believe that, should a rule of thumb develop, it will be the money-back norm, for four reasons. First, in our discussions with acqui-hire participants, it seemed natural for them to use the amount of the investor’s investment as the key point of reference. Conversely, interviewees rarely talked about the relative consideration between the two pools, usually only after being specifically prompted to discuss that ratio. Several interviewees mentioned, for example, that they had firsthand knowledge of a deal in which the investor “got his money back” or “got a substantial fraction of his money back” or “negotiated to get back double his initial investment.”184 On the other hand, interviewees very rarely referred to percentages of total consideration. This suggests that acqui-hire participants tend to think of the investor’s “rightful” share by reference to the amount of the investor’s investment. Second, there would be significant practical problems in implementing a percentage allocation norm. Because the start-up and its investors do not participate in the compensation pool, they are not necessarily privy to the amount in this pool and its particulars.185 In our interviews, there were disagreements about whether investors typically knew the terms of the compensation pool.186 But even if some investors are aware of the size of the compensation pool, valuation of that pool for purposes of making a percentage allocation would be difficult.187 As discussed above, the compensation pool consists mostly of restricted stock and other compensation that vests over time. A percentage allocation norm would require discounting unvested consideration to take into account the risk of nonvesting and also the fact that the engineers effectively earn some of that consideration through their future work effort, to which the investors have no reasonable claim.188 Furthermore, even if the valuation issue were not overly difficult, there would nothing to stop the buyer and the defecting engineers from supplementing the compensation pool with grants of incentive compensation that are awarded shortly after the acqui-hire deal closed. Third, considering that one of the primary purposes of the deal consideration is to “do right by the investors,” using the investor’s initial investment as the point of reference leads to more rational and predictable results. If a percentage allocation rule were used, the amount that the investor ultimately recovers depends on matters like liquidation preferences and percentage stock ownership, which can vary substantially from deal to deal. Yet the vast majority of acqui-hires involve the same basic fact pattern: the start-up was unsuccessful, though a promising team of engineers was assembled.189 If a percentage allocation rule were used, investors in different acquihires could receive drastically different returns on investment, even though all of their investments suffered the same fate.

Id. On the other hand, they do participate in the deal consideration pool. In an asset deal, the start-up receives the deal consideration, which is subsequently distributed to the investors in liquidation. In a stock deal, the investors directly receive their share of the deal consideration. 186 Compare Interview #7 (investors generally do not know precise terms of compensation pool) with Interview #11 (investors do know terms of compensation pool). 187 The deal consideration is usually fully vested, so there is no issue in valuing that pool. But, with regard to unvested property, some of the value of the property is surely attributable to the future effort of the defecting engineers that is necessary to cause the property to vest. That value is effectively additional compensation and should not be considered part of the overall consideration that would be divided according to a rule of thumb percentage allocation. 188 See supra note __ & accompanying text (discussing pro rata allocations of each type of consideration paid by the buyer). 189 See supra notes 40-44 & accompanying text.
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Finally, behavioral economics research indicates that people tend to have a particularly intense focus on the amount of their sunk cost investments in making financial decisions, even if the sunk costs are not at all relevant to the decision.190 In other words, people will make efforts to avoid “booking” a loss. Thus, for example, in evaluating the price at which they would be willing to sell their homes, people appear to place a significant amount of weight on how much they paid for the home.191 This phenomenon, known as the sunk cost or break even effect, suggests that in acquihiring situations, where the “proper” allocation to the deal consideration pool is highly uncertain, investors will tend to focus on the amount of their initial investment in evaluating the fairness of an acqui-hire deal.192 In summary, we predict that a money-back norm will develop, which will help determine the ultimate allocation between the deal consideration and compensation pools. However, while this norm will be a starting point for making the allocation, many of the factors discussed in Part III will influence the final allocation.193 For example, all else being equal, particularly prominent venture capital funds will likely receive greater allocations to the deal consideration pool (because of reputational concerns), as will investors who have had more significant face-to-face contact with their entrepreneurs (because of loyalty effects). B. Legal Innovation to Protect Investor Interests We previously outlined several reasons why it is difficult for investors in Silicon Valley to make credible threats to sue their entrepreneurs.194 As a consequence, investors generally lack leverage to protect their interests in acqui-hire transactions.195 Prominent entrepreneur and tech blogger Michael Arrington recently suggested that, in response to this situation, counsel for investors will develop legal innovations to address this deficiency. Specifically, he suggested that

See, e.g., Hal R. Arkes & Catherine Blumer, The Psychology of Sunk Costs, 35 ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAV. & HUM. DECISION PROCESSES 124 (1985) (discussing this sunk costs effect); Richard H. Thaler, Toward a Positive Theory of Consumer Choice, 1 J. ECON. BEHAV. & ORG. 39, 47-50 (1980) (modeling the effect). 191 See David Genesove & Christopher Mayer, Loss Aversion and Seller Behavior: Evidence from the Housing Market, 116 Q.J. ECON. 1233 (2001) (suggesting that individuals facing the prospect of selling their home for less than they paid for it chose higher asking prices and held out for longer before selling); Lee Anne Fennell, Homeownership 2.0, 102 NW. U. L. REV. 1047, 1109-10 (2008) (arguing that “[t]urning down offers below the purchase-price benchmark may be understood as risk-seeking behavior consistent with the ‘trying to break even’ phenomenon”); Richard H. Thaler & Eric J. Johnson, Gambling with the House Money and Trying to Break Even: The Effects of Prior Outcomes on Risky Choice, 36 MGMT. SCI. 643, 65758 (1990) (discussing the break even effect and suggesting that “when decision makers have prior losses, outcomes which offer the opportunity to ‘break even’ are especially attractive”). 192 See supra note __. It should be noted that the behavioral economic research behind these theories involved the general population, not start-up investors. There is reason to suspect that start-up investors might not evaluate financial matters in the same way that the general population does. Start-up investors are willing to finance twenty or more failures for the chance at the home run investment. They therefore may not mentally frame financial matters in same way as ordinary people, who never make such risky investments. 193 The salience of this norm will, for example, vary depending on the amount of money invested in the start-up by the investors in the first instance. If the investors have put $500,000 into the business, then a money-back norm is probably viable. If the investors have invested $10 million into the business, then it is probably not. 194 See Part II.B. 195 Interview #15 (“If all the employees want out, then the investors don’t have much leverage.”)
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investors’ counsel develop new contractual provisions that deal specifically with the prospect of a future acqui-hire.196 In this Section, we propose several possible innovations along these lines.197 First, investors could try to increase the liquidation preference they receive on their preferred stock or the liquidation premium they receive on their convertible notes. Liquidation preferences/premiums typically stipulate that upon the occurrence of a liquidity event—such as the sale or liquidation of the company—the investors will receive back their initial investment or a multiple thereof, as well as any accrued but unpaid dividends or interest. In response to the acquihire phenomenon, investors could negotiate for a liquidation preference/premium with a higher multiple. In theory, this would increase the investor’s recovery in an acqui-hire because it would increase the investor’s share of the deal consideration pool. However, a significant problem with this approach is that it does not ensure that a minimum amount of consideration will even flow into the deal consideration pool. If there are insufficient funds to pay the investor its full preference/premium, then the investor bears the shortfall.198 Put differently, the key economic issue in acqui-hires is not the amount of liquidation preference/premium but rather the allocation of the buyer’s payments between the deal consideration and the compensation pool. In addition, an overly generous liquidation preference could actually backfire by encouraging the engineers to simply defect to the buyer in lieu of doing an acqui-hire. As discussed above, there are a number of reasons why these individuals would be reluctant to defect, including concern for their reputation, a sense of loyalty to their investors, fear of social sanctions, the positive optics of being acquired by a larger company, and tax considerations.199 If the liquidation preference eats too much into the engineers’ ultimate take-home recovery, the magnitude of these factors may be less than the marginal cost of doing an acqui-hire, prompting the engineers to defect.200 In that case, the investors would receive little or no recovery when the start-up thereafter liquidates. Alternatively, investment contracts could specify that all of the consideration, whether in the deal consideration or compensation pool, go into the deal consideration pool for distribution pursuant to the waterfall distribution rules (e.g., first to creditors, then to preferred stockholders,
Michael Arrington, Some Investors May Request Protection from Acqui-hires, UNCRUNCHED, Apr. 24, 2012, at http://uncrunched.com/2012/04/24/some-investors-may-request-protection-from-aqui-hires (“[W]hat I do believe we’ll start to see are clauses being added to investment contracts that are designed to change these [acqui-hire] deals. Specifically these clauses would force all deal consideration around a deal – including stock options and stock grants to employees – to be pooled and distributed pro rata among all shareholders.”). 197 The most obvious and straightforward contractual innovation that would increase the leverage of the investors in an acqui-hire transaction would be to require, as a condition to get funding, all start-up employees to sign enforceable covenants not to compete that would cover employment with the technology companies that engage in acqui-hiring. This would require the buyer and defecting engineers to negotiate with the investors for a release and would, consequently, give the investors the bargaining leverage that they currently lack. The problem, of course, is that California refuses to enforce covenants not to compete as a matter of public policy save in a few limited instances not relevant here. This innovation would therefore be ineffective in Silicon Valley. 198 Another problem with this approach is that it could change the economics in transactions that are true acquisitions, not acqui-hires. 199 See Part III. 200 One interviewee told us that he had been involved in an acqui-hire transaction in which an angel investor had negotiated a 5x liquidation preference. This preference, if honored, would have ensured that the investor received the entirety of the deal consideration. The buyer informed the investor that it would not do the deal unless he waived his preference and accepted a smaller payout. The investor eventually agreed to accept a smaller payout, in part because the start-up was teetering on the brink of insolvency and there was a real prospect that he would receive nothing if the deal did not occur.
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then to common stockholders). The problem with this approach is that, as previously mentioned, the compensation pool typically consists of restricted stock and other unvested consideration that must, from the buyer’s perspective, go to the engineers for incentive purposes. To throw everything into the deal consideration would usually result in much of this incentive compensation ending up in the investor’s hands, which would make the transaction undesirable to the buyer. Furthermore, as with an overly generous liquidation preference/premium, if the engineers determine that they would get too little under the waterfall after pooling all of the buyer’s consideration together, they could simply defect, leaving the investor with nothing. The most promising potential innovation would be for investment contracts to specify instead that a minimum percentage amount of the buyer’s aggregate payments be allocated to the deal consideration pool. For example, 30 percent of the buyer’s total consideration would have to be allocated to the deal consideration pool. While more promising than the innovations previously discussed, this approach also has its problems. First, there is the issue of valuation. The compensation pool paid by the buyer will typically not be paid out all at once but, rather, will consist of restricted stock and other inducements that will vest over time and, in some cases, will be performance-based. It will, therefore, be difficult to determine the present value of the aggregate consideration paid by the buyer, which is a necessary first step in determining what percentage of this consideration must be allocated to the deal consideration pool. One way to solve this valuation problem would be to make the allocations to each pool consist of pro rata portions of each type of consideration. So, if the required allocation is 30/70, then thirty percent of the restricted stock and other incentive compensation would go into the deal consideration, as would thirty percent of any cash or unrestricted stock paid by the buyer. But this is deeply problematic from the perspective of the buyer, who wants the incentive compensation to go its newly-hired engineers to get the desired incentive effects. Furthermore, the investors would prefer not to have their economic fortunes depend on whether their former employees continued their employment with Google for the full three or four years or whether they went on to hit their performance incentives. Closely related to the valuation problem is the fact that, when restricted stock and other unvested compensation vests, part of the economic value going to the engineer is attributable to her work effort after the acqui-hire closed. In that sense, restricted stock is akin to salary. Presumably, in valuing unvested compensation for purposes of making the minimum allocation to the deal consideration, the compensation must be discounted to reflect the fact that future work effort by the engineers will be necessary to receive it. Another problem with this approach is that there are relatively easy ways for the buyer and the engineers to circumvent it. While unvested compensation will presumably be included in the calculation of the buyer’s aggregate consideration, future salary earned by the engineers presumably will not. Buyers and the engineers could therefore swap restricted stock and unvested compensation for greater salary and thereby reduce the investor’s recovery. While this strategy would not be optimal for the buyer and the engineers (who, all else being equal, would have structured for unvested compensation rather than salary), the benefit of cutting the investors out may be enough to justify the cost. Similarly, new incentive packages granted by the buyer after the acqui-hire would presumably not be included in the total consideration paid by the buyer, though there would probably be a representation at closing that there are no side deals. Buyers and the engineers could have an informal understanding, one that is not legally enforceable, that the buyer will review their
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incentive packages six months after closing to determine whether the engineers are properly incentivized. While not ideal from the engineers’ perspective due to the added uncertainty, the benefit of not having to share the newly granted incentive compensation might be worth the risk.201 Finally, as with the other potential innovations, if the engineers determine that the investor’s share is too large, they could simply defect. A minimum percentage allocation rule could try to cover defections, though it would not be easy to distinguish between defections that are in lieu of acqui-hires (which would trigger the rule) and garden variety departures (which would not). But even if a defection were covered, to make a recovery investors would ultimately have to, at a minimum, credibly threaten that they would enforce their contractual rights in court. Given the received wisdom in Silicon Valley that “investors never sue their founders,” and the dearth of any such litigation, it is likely that any such threat would be perceived as empty. In summary, it is doubtful that legal innovations could, standing alone, provide investors with better leverage in acqui-hire situations. When combined with the factors discussed in Part III, however, legal innovations could increase the investor’s recovery. If, for example, the documents specify the amount that investors are to receive, reputational and loyalty effects may encourage the engineers to pay out the specified amount or an amount reasonably close to it. The ever-present danger, however, is that if investors push too hard, whether in the legal documents or in negotiations, the engineers will have the option to simply defect, leaving the investors emptyhanded. CONCLUSION In this Article, we provided the first formal description of the acqui-hire transaction structure. We also proposed a solution to a puzzle posed by the acqui-hire that is both novel and vitally important to some of the largest and most influential technology companies in the world. Drawing upon state law, social norms, informal sanctions, tax considerations, and cognitive biases, we showed how the social norms of Silicon Valley lead engineers in some cases to prefer acqui-hires to straight hires, even though acqui-hires leave money on the table. Finally, we analyzed the critical issue of how acqui-hiring proceeds are allocated and proposed several contractual provisions that have the potential to alter the default allocation.

Another problem with this approach is the definitional issue of whether a defection would trigger the minimum percentage allocation rule. If the transaction is structured as an acqui-hire, then it is clear that the rule would apply. But what if there’s simply a defection? In that case, there is formally no deal consideration pool. If defections did not trigger the minimum percentage allocation rule, then that would again create an incentive at the margin to defect rather than do an acqui-hire. And if certain defections did trigger the rule, then the contractual provision would have to distinguish between the ones that do and the ones that do not. If the entire group of founders and engineers left in one fell swoop, that would be an easy case. But what if only one of the founders and three engineers left?
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APPENDIX In Part III.E, we explained that tax considerations promote acqui-hiring by converting ordinary, compensation income into capital gains. A few technical caveats to the tax analysis are necessary, though they do not materially affect the conclusion that tax considerations support acquihiring. First, acqui-hires are sometimes structured as tax-free reorganizations.202 In those situations, which are relatively rare,203 the tax benefit to the engineers from receiving a portion of the deal consideration in lieu of compensation is even greater. This is because, in addition to the favorable conversion of ordinary income into capital gain, the employees also get to defer the tax until they liquidate the buyer stock that they receive in the reorganization. Second, in analyzing the tax advantageousness of a particular transaction structure, the tax consequences to all parties to the transaction must be considered.204 If one side of a transaction receives a tax benefit and the other side receives an equal, offsetting tax detriment, the transaction is not tax-advantaged, and we would expect the parties to take these offsetting tax consequences into account in setting their nominal (i.e., pre-tax) prices.205 Therefore, it is not a complete analysis to simply say that the engineers are better off tax-wise receiving a certain amount of deal consideration in lieu of the same amount from the compensation pool, because the buyer may suffer a tax detriment when it pays more deal consideration and less into the compensation pool.206 However, in most acqui-hire cases, the buyer will not suffer a significant tax detriment. If the buyer had, in lieu of an acqui-hire, simply hired away the engineers, the buyer would have generally received immediate ordinary deductions when it made compensation payments to the engineers.207 If the acqui-hire is structured as the buyer’s purchase of a covenant not to sue, then that payment would also result in ordinary deduction.208 Thus, there would be no tax detriment to the buyer. However, if the acqui-hire is structured as an asset deal or stock purchase, then the buyer’s deductions would be deferred. If the buyer purchases the start-up’s assets, the purchase price of

See supra note 53 and accompanying text. See id. 204 See Michael S. Knoll, The Tax Efficiency of Stock-Based Compensation, 103 TAX NOTES 203, 208 (2004) (“Whether a compensation mechanism is tax efficient should be determined from a joint contracting perspective rather than the employer’s or employee’s perspective alone.”); David I. Walker, Is Equity Compensation Tax Advantaged?, 84 B.U. L. REV. 695, 699-700 (2004). 205 See Jonathan Gruber, PUBLIC FINANCE AND PUBLIC POLICY 521 (2005) (“[T]he side of the market on which the tax is imposed is irrelevant to the distribution of the tax burdens.”); Ethan Yale & Gregg D. Polsky, Reforming the Taxation of Deferred Compensation, 85 N.C. L. REV. 571, 589 (2007) (noting that the “side of the compensation arrangement on which a tax burden is imposed or a tax benefit… conferred is irrelevant…since the parties can adjust the nominal pretax compensation to shift the tax benefits and burdens between themselves.”). 206 See Polsky & Hellwig, supra note 6, at 1088 (arguing that a unilateral tax perspective is flawed). 207 See I.R.C. § 162 (authorizing deduction for compensation). This is generally true regardless of the form in which the compensation is paid. If the compensation is paid in the form of stock options or restricted stock, then the ordinary deduction would often be delayed until the options are exercised or the restricted stock vests. See I.R.C. § 83(h). 208 See Treas. Reg. § 1.263(a)-4 (allowing immediate deductions when intangible value is acquired except in certain specified instances not relevant to the purchase of a covenant not to sue).
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those assets would be amortized ratably over fifteen years,209 and those amortization deductions would be characterized as ordinary deductions. However, if all of the start-up’s intangible assets, including workplace in force, were abandoned or became worthless before the end of that fifteen year period, then the unamortized cost of those assets could be immediately deducted at that time. Finally, if the acqui-hire is structured as a stock purchase, the buyer would not be entitled to any immediate deduction, but it would be entitled to an ordinary deduction once the stock was abandoned or deemed to be worthless.210 Thus, in cases where the acqui-hire is structured as an asset or stock deal, the buyer’s deduction will be delayed somewhat, which is generally disadvantageous. However, this tax cost is likely not significant for two reasons. First, because the start-up’s projects can be expected to be jettisoned quickly after the acqui-hire is completed, the buyer will typically not have to wait very long to get all of its deductions. 211 Second, many of buyers in acqui-hire transactions are subject to low effective marginal tax rates (because of the existence of net operating losses212 or due to international tax planning relating to intangibles213). These low tax rates mean that whatever delay occurs with respect to deduction utilization would often result in a low tax cost to the buyer. On the other hand, if an acqui-hire is accomplished in a tax-free deal, then the acqui-hire could be significantly detrimental to the buyer. In a tax-free reorganization, the buyer will generally receive a carryover basis in the start-up’s assets (in an asset deal) or in the employee’s stock (in a stock deal).214 In either case, that basis will usually be very low and, when the stock or assets are thereafter jettisoned or deemed worthless, the buyer’s loss will be limited to the amount of that basis;215 on the other hand, in a straight hire, the buyer would typically get a deduction equal to the full value of the consideration paid by the buyer. In summary, the buyer will generally not suffer significant adverse tax consequences from the acqui-hire structure, except perhaps if the transaction is structured as a tax-free reorganization, which is highly unusual.216 However, even in tax-free reorganizations, if the buyer is subject to very low effective marginal tax rates, the tax cost will be minimal.

See I.R.C. § 197 (providing that business intangibles are generally amortized ratably over 15 years). See I.R.C. § 165 (authorizing deduction for losses incurred in a trade or business). Even if the acqui-hire is structured as a stock deal, then the buyer would still be entitled an ordinary deduction once the start-up’s stock is abandoned or deemed worthless. See I.R.C. § 165(g)(3). If the abandonment or worthlessness occurs in taxable year after the year in which the acqui-hire is consummated, then the acqui-hire would have resulted in a delayed deduction, which could, depending on whether the buyer’s tax rates have changed or not, be tax disadvantageous, though this would usually be a minor issue. 211 It is possible that the buyer might not be able to recover the entire purchase price until all of the acqui-hired engineers depart. See Treas. Reg. § 1.197-2(b)(3) (defining workforce in place, which is an intangible subject to the amortization rules in section 197, as including “any portion of a purchase price of an acquired trade or business attributable to the existence of a highly-skilled workforce”). On the other hand, the expected employment term for an acqui-hired engineer is likely relatively short compared to the full fifteen year amortization period. 212 See, e.g., Stacy Cowley, Facebook’s Zuckerberg May Face $2 Billion Tax Bill, CNNMONEY, February 7, 2012 (noting that Facebook expects to realize a net operating loss in 2012). 213 See, e.g., Jesse Drucker, Google 2.4% Rate Shows How $60 Billion Lost to Tax Loopholes, BLOOMBERG, Oct. 21, 2010 (noting Google’s 2.4% effective tax rate). See also Edward D. Kleinbard, Stateless Income, 11 FLORIDA TAX REVIEW 699, 707-14 (2011) (describing in detail Google’s use of the “Double Irish Dutch Sandwich” structure that results in Google’s exceptionally low effective tax rate). 214 See I.R.C. § 362(b). 215 See I.R.C. § 165(b) (limiting loss deductions to the amount of basis in the property that suffers the loss). 216 See supra note 53 and accompanying text.
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Third, and finally, the tax discussion in Part III.E assumes that the parties’ characterization of the acqui-hire transaction will be respected by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Yet, the form of an acqui-hire does not truly reflect its substance. Where a buyer in an acqui-hire pays for a covenant not to sue, it really is not worried about getting sued.217 Likewise, where the buyer purchases the assets or stock of the start-up, it actually does not place significant value on these items.218 In substance, the deal consideration in acqui-hires is additional compensation paid to the engineers who pay it over to investors and other shareholders for the purpose of preserving their reputation.219 The IRS is able to re-characterize transactions when the form of the transaction is inconsistent with its substance.220 In an acqui-hire situation, that would mean treating the engineers as first receiving the entire purchase price (i.e., deal consideration plus compensation pool) and then transferring the appropriate portion of it over to the investors and others. In the example in Part III.E, where the engineer deflected $300,000 of her would-be $1,000,000 compensation into the deal consideration pool and received back $100,000 in respect of her equity interest in the startup, the IRS would treat the engineer as first receiving the full $1,000,000 as compensation and then transferring $200,000 to the investors. The full $1,000,000 would be ordinary compensation income and the employee would likely be able to claim a $200,000 ordinary deduction,221 for net ordinary income of $800,000.222 If the acqui-hire were respected, she would have realized $700,000 of ordinary income and $100,000 of capital gain. Thus, the recast by the IRS would take away the tax benefit that the engineer by effectively recharacterizing $100,000 of capital gain as ordinary income. Whether the IRS would be able to make this type of recharacterization in acqui-hire transactions depends on whether the IRS would be able to distinguish a true acquisition, where the buyer really wants the items it buys, from a mere acqui-hire, where the buyer only wants the at-will human capital.

See supra Part II (concluding that acqui-hires are not explained by litigation risk). See supra Part I (describing acqui-hires as transactions that buyers undertake merely to hire the start-up’s at-will employees). 219 See supra Part III.A.-C (arguing that the reputation enhancement is the best explanation for the acqui-hiring phenomenon). 220 See United States v. Phellis, 257 U.S. 156, 168 (1921) (recognizing “the importance of regarding matters of substance and disregarding form in applying the… income tax laws”); Weinert’s Est. v. Comm’r, 294 F.2d 750, 755 (5th Cir. 1961) (referring to the substance-over-form principle as “the cornerstone of sound taxation”). 221 See I.R.C. § 162 (allowing a deduction for ordinary and necessary business expenses). Historically, courts have sometimes disallowed deductions where an individual makes voluntary reputation enhancing payments, even where they are intended to bolster the individual’s future earning capacity. See, e.g., Welch v. Helvering, 290 U.S. 111 (1933) (denying such a deduction). But see Jenkins v. Comm’r, T.C. Memo. 1983-667 (allowing such a deduction based on the specific facts and circumstances of the case). However, recently promulgated regulations appear to overrule the Welch case and allow a deduction for reputation enhancing expenditures that are related to the taxpayer’s trade or business in all cases. See Treas. Reg. § 1.263(a)-4 (2004). However, for the acqui-hired engineer, the deduction would be considered an unreimbursed employee business expense, see I.R.C. § 62(a)(1), and therefore it would be subject to limitation under § 67 and under the alternative minimum tax, see I.R.C. § 67(a), (b) & 56(b)(1)(A)(i). 222 As discussed in supra note 221, the deduction would be limited under § 67 and the alternative minimum tax, so the net ordinary income would effectively be higher than $800,000 and, depending on the taxpayer’s adjusted gross income level and other deductions, could approach $1,000,000.
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